Could the City of Cape Town please send somebody out to have a look at the incredible mess outside a house opposite De Velde in Somerset West?
The house is situated on the road connecting Somerset Mall (De Beers Road) and Victoria Street. An old mattress, rubbish of all sorts, what seems to be a broken plastic chair and other rubbish have just been dumped over the fence. One cannot think anybody would want to live like that!
It is no use trying to live a decent life with such rubbish being strewn around. Rats will have a lovely time there! And all of this just opposite the flats in De Velde.
Jackie Viljoen,
Email
Ward 15 councillor Gregory Peck responds: Illegal dumping is a major problem, especially in an area where people don’t have the means to transport or hire transport to take rubble to the drop-off site in Gordon’s Bay. I regularly request the Solid Waste Department to clean the area along Victoria Link Road next to the Geelsloot. They are currently only allowed about 30% of staff working at any time due to Covid-19 policies, and Solid Waste teams throughout the metro have had many cases of Covid-19 infections, as it is a hazardous job. They are doing their best and will clean this area.I met with officials of the department before lockdown to request an area in Lourensia Park be allocated and have concrete walls on three sides, so residents can dump waste there, and it can be collected once or twice a month. All the households have wheelie bins for household waste collected weekly, but the larger items and building and garden rubble are the problem.Illegal dumping occurs throughout the metro and costs the City over R350 million per year. An extract from the City’s website states: “Although we have a number of waste management strategies and services in place for dealing with all types of waste, we have a dumping problem in Cape Town. It is one of the biggest challenges the City faces. It is expensive, damages our environment and is harmful to ourselves and our animals.”
