“It is a huge problem for us, we have spoken to residents in the area but nothing seems to change,” said Gerrit Smith frustrated.
The pictures above clearly explain the situation. It is alleged that residents from Ext 8 are using this land as their dumping site.
“Day after day truck loads full of garbage and old building material gets dumped here,” explained Lourens Van Aswegen.
These men are clearly fed up.
“The mine is giving us problems about this situation; this is putting us in danger of losing the contract.”
They need the residents of Ext 8 and the community to support them by not allowing this illegal dumping.
Apart from the garbage being dumped, there are also allegedly men cutting the trees illegally and selling them to companies around Witbank.
“Trucks stop here and pick up the wood, not knowing that it is illegally cut down,” said Gerrit.
Gerrit and Lourens are advising all who buy their wood from the farm just outside eMalahleni on the old Ogies road near Landou to make sure that the wood they buy isn’t sold illegally.
“We have an idea who the suspects are; we want to warn them that our next steps will be to involve the local police,” warned Gerrit. “We are not the only farmers suffering a loss due to wood and mielie theft.”
The farmers in this area suffer a great loss due to mielie theft each year.
Mielies worth thousands of rands are being stolen year after year.
They have allegedly spoken to other farmers in the area who also has the same problem.
“We as a farming community will stand together to make sure that these thieves no longer get away with this,” concluded Gerrit.
