Measures to clamp down on illegal dumping will include scrapping the fee for commercial customers at landfill sites.
|||Cape Town - Measures to clamp down on illegal dumping, which is costing the city R183 000 a day, could include scrapping the fee for commercial customers at landfill sites, impounding cars from which waste is being dumped illegally and creating awareness about the dangers of illegal waste.
This is according to Ernest Sonnenberg, mayco member for utilities, who was speaking on Thursday during a visit to an illegal dumping site in Lwandle, Strand.
In Mitchells Plain, about R4.3 million has been spent since July last year on clearing illegal dump sites.
Sonnenberg said the city was trying to clean up 985 illegal dumping “hot spots”.
Kent Mdluli, who lives next to the site in Lwandle, said people dumped anything from animal carcasses to rubble and garden waste, and they came by night and day.
Mdluli said that some residents dumped their waste if they had missed rubbish collection day, and that building contractors working in the suburbs around Somerset West often dumped their waste in Lwandle.
Sonnenberg said the city was spending R200m a year on illegal dumping alone.
The death of three-year-old Jordin Lewis in Delft after playing at an illegal dump site where people had dumped toxic waste had drawn attention to the problem.
Jordin was buried in Belhar at the weekend.
Her mother, Ethleen Lewis, said on Thursday she missed her daughter and her home was quiet without her.
Lewis said she wanted to take legal action against those responsible for her daughter’s death, “but we haven’t heard anything about who is responsible. No one actually contacts me to let me know what is going on, so we don’t even know who we must sue”.
She said she would wait for the investigation to be concluded before starting legal action.
Sonnenberg said he could not comment on the case as it was a criminal investigation.
He had approached the city’s portfolio committee on safety and security to ask that they amend by-laws that deal with the prevention of public nuisance.
“This is in order to give us the authority to impound your vehicle if you are found to be dumping waste illegally.”
Commercial customers were charged R50 a ton to dump waste at landfills around the city.
Sonnenberg said since this fee was often used as an excuse by people dumping illegally, he was looking at having it scrapped.
neo.maditla@inl.co.za
Cape Argus