About thirty Bonteheuwel residents took to the streets last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday to clear up the metropolitan sports field on which excessive dumping occurs.
Residents and the City of Cape Town sub-council staff and staff from the solid waste team took three days to clean up the field plagued with dumping for years. They started on Monday September 19, and finished on Wednesday September 21.
Bonteheuwel ward councillor Angus McKenzie said residents needed to change the mindset that they could just dump anywhere they wanted to. He said that residents paid vagrants and drug addicts R10 to get rid of their household dirt.
“We have embarked on a project to create a dumping minimising site which will most likely be in Vlamboom Square. Residents will be incentivised for their dumping which will be sorted out on site. We are still deciding what the incentive would be and hopefully this will be built in the current financial year which ends in June next year,” he said.
Bonteheuwel resident Deborah Ruiters said people dump because they are “too lazy to stand up when it is collecting day for bins.” She said that residents cleaned up the sports field so that their children could play on it.
“We did this so that our children can play there without covering their noses because of the smell that comes from all that dirt,” she said.
Estelle Osborne, from Bonteheuwel, said adults needed to be an example for their children and not dump.
“My main reason for assisting is cleanliness for our children, not for me, but for them. We need to report dumping even if it’s the person two houses away. We need to stand with one another rather than turn a blind eye,” she said.