Rubbish piles up in PE
Residents, municipality play the blame game
Rubbish is piling up in Port Elizabeth streets, with residents blaming the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and the city council blaming the residents.
Some residents are dumping waste at dump sites but others say they are dumping their garbage on street corners because they don’t have wheelie bins or plastic bags.
Luxolo Namette, a law enforcement officer with the municipality, said the municipal department of waste management had run a road show last year to educate people about the dumping by-laws.
“It seems our effort is fruitless because rubbish is accumulating everywhere.”
But Motherwell resident, Thobile Cingani , 60, put the blame on the municipality.
“There is no collection of rubbish and residents have no option but to dump their dirt everywhere,” he said.
Mohammed Ahmed, 33, who has a cellphone repair shop in Govan Mbeki street, in the centre of Port Elizabeth, says rubbish has not been collected for two weeks.
“Large rats and flies make this place unhealthy. There is an unbearable smell all over here.
“It seems everybody is dumping here. We have complained to the municipality but to no avail.”
Namette said the wheelie bins supplied to residents were being used for other purposes than rubbish collection.
“The bins are meant to alleviate the dumping crisis. Some residents use them to collect groceries, alcohol and water. We discourage that,” he said.
Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki said the municipality had been collecting rubbish “on a regular basis”.
“I encourage residents to work closely with their councillors and street committees to report this problem to the municipality.”
Next: Rough diamonds - part three: “If we could work legally, we wouldn’t break the law”
Previous: ANC election list fraud
© 2016 GroundUp. 
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.