Terrible smell near crèche upsets
A bad smell near a crèche in Booysens has the community upset, as they say it is a health risk.
A terrible smell hanging in the air near the Kleintreetjies Crèche in Booysens has the personnel and parents of children worried. Some parents have even removed their children from the crèche, causing the owner to lose money. “We have been struggling with this problem for almost three years now. Several parents have also complained about it,” crèche owner Amanda Biljoen said.
They suspect that the smell is being caused by chemicals from a nearby factory. The smell comes from a small stream flowing behind their homes through to the Apies River to Bon Accord. The stream has allegedly been blocked from Wilhelm Street up to the factory. Biljoen mentioned that the smell got worse every day from 17:00 in the evening until the next morning.
“It is difficult for us to leave our houses from 20:00, as the smell is worse,” she commented. Parents are also complaining. I have lost children from my business because of this bad smell,” she said.
A concerned mother, Lorraine Erasmus, said the smell was a health risk and that she had gotten sick once when she went to fetch her child. She said that her son did not even want to go to crèche anymore because of the smell.
Biljoen said that the smell had changed from last year, from a sewage smell to a chemical one.
Residents said they needed the matter to be dealt with urgently, before endangered the health of the community any further. Biljoen said that they had tried several channels to resolve the problem.
Rekord was still trying to establish if the factory or the Tshwane metro is responsible for the smell at the time of publication.
