Back to square one.
A resident contacted the Standerton Advertiser on June 23 about the appalling conditions at the Standerton River Park after skips, near the surrounding flat blocks, were removed.
A few months ago, four open-water swimmers swam 16km of the Vaal River to raise awareness of its contamination and to help seek solutions.
They began on Friday, March 5 and proceeded the following Saturday to swim 8.5km to the old bridge on the Meyerville-side.
Swimmers and the community were cleaning the Standerton River Park, with Lekwa Clean Up Crew (LCUC) also helping.
AfriForum, Standerton donated gloves to the workers.
The Standerton Advertiser sent a WhatsApp-message to the communications manager of the Lekwa Municipality, Ms Thobeka Mtshiselwa, on June 24, asking the reason why the skips were removed.
Ms Msthiselwa said that most of the skips were damaged and the agent responsible for the flats, requested that it be removed.
The tenants were complaining about the skips always being full and burning.
According to her, the other problem was that as soon as the bins were cleaned, community members not living in the flats, brought their refuse and dumped it in the bins.
Within a day the bins were full again.
She added that the agent wrote letters to the tenants, informing them that refuse should be taken out on collection day.
A schedule was provided to the agent.
In conclusion, Ms Mtshiselwa commented that rubbish is dumped by street kids, who collect the bags when placed outside for collection, taking it to the river park.
“We spoke to some of them to just take what they want, leaving the bags behind.”
