SOMERSET East residents are up in arms about the filthy state their otherwise beautiful little town, at the foot of the Boschberg, is in.
Towards the end of last year, municipal workers went on an illegal strike and for weeks no rubbish was removed and many rubbish heaps sprung up all over town.
During their clean-up only household refuse were removed, but the heaps of garden refuse remained.
Residents expressed their disappointment and disgust on social media.
But Mandisi Planga, acting municipal manager for the Blue Crane Route Municipality, said that it is not the municipality’s responsibility or duty to collect garden refuse.
“My response to this is that our legislative responsibility is to collect household refuse, not garden refuse. Citizens pay a particular fee for this service.”
According to him residents do not pay for garden refuse collection. “This is the only town where there is an expectation that garden refuse should also be collected by the municipality. When this service was done, it was offered free of charge,” Planga said.
“The circumstances have changed financially. Due to financial challenges the municipality is unable to offer this service on a regular basis. This has to do with staff shortage and requisite equipment,” he further explained.
“I must also emphasise the point that even the service fee for household collection we charge is not cost recovering.”
He said that a point must be made that because the municipality is unable to collect garden refuse, it should not be an excuse for illegal dumping. “More especially by people who have the means to dispose of their garden refuse at the landfill site.”
Planga said their staff did not go on holiday during the Festive season, but that they revised the collection schedule to ensure that refuse was collected. The revised schedule was issued to the citizens, he said.
“We employ supervisors to ensure that workers do their work. To date I am happy with their performance. I agree that this town is not as clean as it should be, however, relatively speaking, this town is far better than many towns,” Planga said.
“As the municipality, we will do what we can to the best of our abilities to keep the town clean. The same is expected of the citizens.”
In the meantime, municipal workers have started to remove the heaps of garden refuse.
