The Ward 60 street sweeping team, from left, Shaun Gibbons, Sive Ntlemeza, Ishma-iel Adams, Nokuthembela Mzongwana, Micheal Erasmus, Ward 60 councillor Mark Kleinschmidt, Candice Hendricks, Sebastian Smith and Magdalena Thomas.
Wards across the metro have embarked on a street sweeping project.
In Ward 60, which covers Crawford, Lansdowne, Mowbray, Rondebosch East and Sybrand Park, the project started on Wednesday October 5.
Sixteen Expanded Public Works Programme (EPWP) workers will be split into two teams and will concentrate on the roads most in need of sweeping, said Ward 60 councillor Mark Kleinschmidt.
He said that the project was sorely needed because of the amount of littering and dumping.
While the team will be there to keep streets clean, Mr Kleinschmidt urged residents to take responsibility for their own streets.
“The teams will concentrate on roads such as Dolphin Way which is always dirty. This is something that residents have requested and is a way of creating employment. Some residents do still take their brooms and sweep in front of their houses, but they are mainly the older folk. The young people need to get involved too. Residents must stop littering and pick up their papers.”
Ward 49, which covers Athlone, Hazendal, Kewtown, and Silvertown, will also embark on this project soon.
Ward councillor Rashid Adams, said that he is awaiting the final documents from the sub-council before he can go ahead with the project.
“The project was due to start on October 1, but has been delayed pending documents from the sub-council. I can’t give a date as to when it will commence but I do hope that the contracts with the EPWP workers will at least be for a year to provide sustainable employment. We’ve had the project before and those contracts were for around 11 months and proved to be successful,” he said.
Kewtown resident Aziza Hendricks said the roads needed to be cleaned regularly as dumping was an on-going issue in the area.
She said that especially at the flat blocks people dumped all sorts of rubbish and many residents dumped their rubbish in front of other people’s houses.
“Every time they clean, it gets dumped on again. The people dump in front of us and then they say they are creating work for the next person. This project will really help the unemployed. It would really be better if the City tarred the open spaces because then they won’t dump. At the moment the grass on these open spaces is not maintained and the gangsters hide behind the long grass and rob the people when they go to work,” she said.