DEAR Minister of Environmental Affairs, Honourable Edna Molewa.
It’s 5am in January and already humid in the Upper Highway area of KwaZulu-Natal. With all windows tightly shut, any outside breeze to bring relief is denied to the residents. Before morning alarms can ring, a young child is heard whimpering from their bedroom.
A mother rushes to the bedside to find a bloodied nose and pillow dampened by the familiar crimson reminder of the effect the air that they have been breathing each day, for more than two years, is having on their children, their pets, their staff and neighbours and families, their elderly parents, and themselves.
Trudging through each day under a heavy brain fog, temples throbbing, nausea, aching sinuses and rasping coughs.
Itching skin, red eyes, invisible allergies. This is no way to live. The young and frail are particularly impacted, with seemingly never-ending doctors visits and hospital stays. Never-ending medication too, for those who can afford it.
Schools lie directly in the path of the Shongweni Landfill’s brutal onslaught, dividing thousands of children’s right to an education with their right to a clean and healthy environment, which is not harmful.
Parents are exhausted from endless nights of agitated and ill families, while losing sleep from concern that even their kids’ havens of learning aren’t safe from this ghastly, gaseous beast. The small victory of suspension of EnviroServ’s Shongweni Landfill licence to accept waste is of little to no comfort when seemingly halfhearted remedial efforts have failed.
Yet, EnviroServ proclaims their 11-point plan a victory, and you appear to agree, as you conditionally uplift the suspension of EnviroServ’s licence.
More than 150 000 online odour complaints in one year – 2 290 in one day alone – falling on deaf DEA ears. The communities are desperate and crying out to be heard.
By you, a person with power who is supposed to be protecting our environment and who is equipped to make a decision that will result in thorough remedial action of the Shongweni Landfill, that will bring relief to the many tens of thousands of people affected.
We invite you to visit us in the Upper Highway area, to spend a few days and nights enduring what we are all exposed to.
We will welcome you in the spirit of helping to inform and highlight the very real, very scary daily abuse of our human rights.
Upper Highway Air NPO, on behalf of many thousands of affected residents
Hillcrest
