Pleas about pollution draw mixed responses

SOUTH Durban stalwarts have had their say over Mayor James Nxumalo’s impassioned pleas to residents to reduce waste and pollution, with many saying the action needs to start from within the municipality.

While welcoming the mayor’s plea to residents, the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance’s Desmond D’Sa thinks it is rather late, ward 66 councillor, Duncan Du Bois believes enforcement is lacking and the Bluff’s Community Orientated Policing chairman, Rake Jeeves believes people need to be tasked with taking action.

D’Sa said the rhetoric must lead to serious plans and a programme where people and the planet are put first before greed and profit.

“This problem of litter has been going all over the entire city since he was the speaker and later mayor of this once beautiful city.

We have seen alien vegetation mushrooming overnight in our rivers, canals harbour and ocean. With the hosting of the 2010 World Cup and other major events including the building of the Moses Mabhida (white elephant) major infrastructure maintenance funds were reduced in the budget, resulting in the once proud city becoming a city where you see overgrown verges, storm water drains, effluent and sewage plants not being maintained resulted in a collapse of the city’s sewer line and pouring of raw sewerage into the rivers, harbour and ocean, killing all life,” said D’Sa.

He added that green areas like the D’Moss parks are destroyed and hazardous toxic logistics and chemical industries are given permission to develop by the planning and environmental, traffic, health and city departments, such as the well-known green lung of the former Clairwood Racecourse.

“One has to look at the Reunion swamping and marshalling areas to see how the entire area under this mayor has been allowed to be concreted and the green has been destroyed.

The skilled unit that was operating and managing the most sophisticated air quality unit in Durban was dismantled and many e employees left for brighter prospects. If the mayor thought the environment and people’s health was important, they would have budgets set aside every year to employ competent people and put the environment first,” said D’Sa.

“While there is much substance in what the mayor states, like almost everything else in eThekwini’s administration, what is lacking is enforcement. Fine words count for nothing when at the coalface of service delivery, there are insufficient resources and personnel to implement what needs to be done,” said Du Bois.

Fine words count for nothing when at the coalface of service delivery, there are insufficient resources and personnel to implement what needs to be done

According to the councillor, under the current political stewardship, eThekwini has become top-heavy in terms of management at the expense of pro-active policy implementation personnel, resulting in budgets being tilted towards staff wages rather than the funding of resources.

“Recently, for example, the response to a request to the Parks Department to remove branches they had cut down two weeks earlier was that they had only one truck available and it was busy on the Berea.

Then you have the ongoing problem with the weirs. Unless someone like Ivor Aylward draws attention to the state of the weirs, nothing happens.

Look at the proliferation of illegal signs fixed to street poles and traffic lights. Why have officials not removed them and fined the perpetrators whose mobile phone numbers are prominently displayed?

So, I am afraid however sincere the mayor’s concerns are about the environment, without pro-active enforcement, his words lack credibility,” said Du Bois.

however sincere the mayor’s concerns are about the environment, without pro-active enforcement, his words lack credibility

“I agree with everything the mayor is saying,” said Jeeves. “However, we don’t even have enough Metro Police officers to control traffic and trucks, so all these new bylaws are meaningless.”

Jeeves added that moaning about it won’t provide solutions, so he urges Mayor Nxumalo to meet with him to discuss his idea of training and deploying volunteer auxiliary constables and wardens to tackle the issue.

Read the mayor’s letter here.

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