Madam – I must say the SOTA delivered by our sitting mayor was an eye opener to Newcastle`s residents, delivering both the good news and the bad news in one fell swoop.
I applaud His Worship for reaching out to the people, with his walkabout in the CBD. However in the same breath, I feel duty bound to remark on the following. Leading on from his remark about tourism not performing well, he states.
“One thing we`ve found is the Ncandu River is not being utilised.” Perhaps His Worship did not receive a copy of the email from Dr Thabethe, sent to the Newcastle Advertiser, in which he notes that “the type of algae and other growth present in the Ncandu River and the Amcor Dam, had to be identified first, as well as their present toxicity.”
Thabethe eludes to raising a task team to deal with the pollution aspect. I am not a bio-anything, but toxicity and pollution, when attached to Ncandu River sounds seriously worrying. This eludes to the river being sick and not the place to go paddling, so maybe it is underutilised because it will make you sick! On the positive side – perhaps, just perhaps this remark made by His Worship will mean the polluted Ncandu River gets some sadly lacking remedial attention.
Neptune
Response from Dr Dumisani Thabethe, Customer Relations Manager and Head of Communications for the Newcastle Municipality:
Thank you for your encouraging remarks about the Mayor and his SOTA. With regard to the Ncandu River, yes, it would be really good to have a waterfront with interesting shops, restaurants and parks with water features and birds, where families can visit and chill out.
Tourism would definitely benefit from such a development, perhaps that is the type of long term vision that our Mayor has for the Ncandu River.
In the meantime, the river is unfortunately the primary collector of litter, oil from vehicle servicing, commercial and industrial effluent as well as sewage emanating from blocked and burst pipes from our aging infrastructure and it definitely requires remedial attention especially to limit the polluting influence that we, as a town, have on it.
An Ncandu River Forum led by Municipal Officials and involving local experts who are passionate about our river is being initiated.
The Forum will initially monitor the river quality at various points as it flows through the town.
This will give a picture of which areas are causing the pollution and hopefully offenders will be identified and made to operate responsibly.
The Mayor’s vision has identified one of Newcastle’s best assets and we all should follow his example and take the Ncandu River to heart.
ALSO READ: Our town is no longer safe for families
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