Residents fed-up with state of Mamelodi cemetery
“The Tshwane metro needs to do something as soon as possible and have people come and clean the cemetery.”
Mamelodi residents are urging the Tshwane metro to do something about the state of the cemetery in Mamelodi West.
They said as the Easter holidays drew nearer more people went to the cemetery to visit their loved ones’ graves.
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Residents said overgrown grass and weeds have made the area unsafe and they were afraid of being bitten by snakes.
The cemetery, in Section B3, is next to the mountain.
“The Tshwane metro needs to do something as soon as possible and have people come and clean the cemetery,” said Belinda Skhosana.
She said security guards only patrolled the main gate.
Skhosana said the grass was so unkempt it had become difficult to find loved ones’ graves.
She said the cemetery had also become unsafe with drug addicts lurking in the area.
Residents were also fed-up with the litter.
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They said people no longer respected the grave sites and just threw trash on the ground.
Skhosana said it was the Tshwane metro’s responsibility to clean the cemetery, because residents paid their rates every month.
Another resident who recently erected a tombstone for a deceased relative said she was worried about her friends, relatives and neighbours’ safety when visiting the grave.
“What if some one of them is bitten by a snake? There have been stories of people killing snakes when they visit the cemetery,” she said.
“In the past I used to see people coming to the cemetery to clean the graves with spades to cut off the overgrown grass and sometimes in case they come across snakes,” she said.
Residents said they needed more people to patrol the cemetery because drug addicts also lurked in that area.
No response was received from the Tshwane metro at the time of going to press.
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