THE likes of Dezzi Gutzeit and Justin Mackrory of Ugu South Coast Tourism must be tearing their hair out.
The two of them and many others are doing their best in so many ways to convince the world that the Hibiscus Coast is paradise. Dezzi and Justin recently shook hands on a partnership which is aimed at putting us on the motor racing map.
Hopefully it will still happen, but as for our famous Blue Flag beaches… alas, now it might well be ‘Paradise Lost’.
As reported last week, someone (we known not whom yet) literally condemned everyone’s fine efforts to the ‘crap-heap’.
Heads must surely roll for allowing millions of litres of sewage to flow from a badly maintained plant, down the river and into the lagoon slap bang in the middle of one of the country’s most famous beaches. It was subsequently closed to the public for ‘the first time ever’, according to some people.
There can’t be many people living in South Africa who haven’t paid a visit to ‘Margate-by-die-see’ and now there will have to be some serious spade-work to get them to come back.
Don’t shoot the messenger for exposing this catastrophe (because that’s what it was), blame the people responsible for allowing it to happen in the first place. High praise to Ugu for their effort-after-the-faeces. They apparently worked non-stop to open the beach again within a week, but surely that can’t be the end of this smelly business.
Was it just an ‘unfortunate accident’? Was it an ‘honest mistake’? Was it ‘negligence’? Was it a ‘basic lack of skills’? Who gave the order to open the floodgates?
Nobody’s saying much just yet as conservation groups and businessmen are threatening legal action, even ‘criminal charges’ (quoting some ‘Section blah, blah’ of the ‘something, something Act’) so there’s bound to be a bit of turd tossing before we get to the bottom of it.
Unfortunately, there is just too much %$#@! to sweep under the carpet (or into the sea in this case). This is definitely the worst, but it’s certainly not the first… so why didn’t any Ugu technician’s nose twitch earlier?
Remember your own credo, guys: “Ugu District Municipality promotes working together to create an environment that is friendly, responsible, accountable, effective and efficient for our communities.”
