City entities team up to clean up Alexandra

01 August 2016

 

All hands were on deck on Friday January 29 when several City of Johannesburg entities embarked on a joint clean-up operation along Vincent Tshabalala Road in Alexandra in Region E.

 

Spearheaded by the City’s waste management entity Pikitup, the six-hour clean-up campaign involved local residents and employees of the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA), Johannesburg Water, Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) and the Emergency Management Services as well as the Environmental Health Department.

Workers dismantled illegal electricity connections, fixed leaking water pipes, disposed of excessive waste, cleaned storm water lines and fixed potholes. Pikitup’s Jacky Mashapu said the aim was to bring people together to take responsibility for their own environment.

“As Pikitup we’ve realised that alone as a company we cannot effectively keep the city clean because we’re not the only waste generators. Everyone is responsible for all the waste there is in the environment.

“We’re calling upon all members of society, particularly those living within the borders of Johannesburg, to join hands with the City and Pikitup to clean their immediate environment,” he said.

Mashapu said the City had invested in improving the quality of life of its residents by ensuring they lived in a cleaner environment.

“This initiative, which we started in June in the Johannesburg CBD, has yielded good results. We implore citizens of Johannesburg to be co-operative and promote living in a clean environment. We’ve decided to bring our clean-up campaign here with the hope that community members will respond positively.

“By this, we’re aiming at creating a social movement across the city. We want to make people to be part of our movement,” he added.

Project Co-ordinator Gideon Cruywagen said: “We chose Vincent Tshabalala Road because we had a problem in this section. The storm water line had been blocked for a very long time, so we teamed up with various entities and departments and urged the community to refrain from littering their street.

“The refuse causes blockages after being washed down by rains. JRA is assisting us with unblocking our lines and within the next week or two they will be functioning fully.”

He also said residents should not be worried about the stench resulting from the operation as it would dissipate after drying out. He, however, warned that illegal power connections inside the water storm lines posed danger to locals. The clean-up operation will take place once a month on Fridays and will rotate to other areas.