Filth a health hazard

Video

MOSSEL BAY NEWS AND VIDEO - Have you had a hot shower recently? Have you opened a tap today to run a bath or fill a glass with clean drinking water? Have you even paid a second thought about it before you visited the loo?

If you have, you are luckier than hundreds of people living in Mossel Bay.

While Mossel Bay is celebrated as the 2017 Town of the Year, while the municipality has been named the best local government in the country, scores of people within the town's boundaries continue to live in squalor.

Informal settlement
In an area known as Endlovini in Asla Park, an informal settlement has been expanding since 2014.

Elementary services, such communal taps and a few communal toilets were supplied by the municipality for the scores of people who have settled there. To this day, people are unobstructed when erecting makeshift dwellings in this area despite the lack of services as there simply are no other formalised areas available in which to settle.

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The community leaders say they were promised in 2014 that the area would receive electricity. For this reason, a red number was painted on the front doors of the homes. Nothing came of the promises, and illegal electricity connections now crisscross the area.

When visiting Endlovini, the stench that permeates the air is the first and lasting impression.

This stems from an open wastewater ditch that divides the area in two. Water, apparently running from a stormwater pipe is fed into a trench and allowed to flow downstream, collecting waste as it goes along.

The stormwater line is said to run from the N2 Industrial Park close to the squatter area. Even though the area has not had much rain lately, water continues to flow from the open pipe.

Residents who claim to have lived there since 2014, say the municipality used a mechanical digger to create the trench down the valley in 2014.

The formal edge of Asla Park is within spitting distance, yet municipal services are not rendered to the squatter community of Endlovini.

Waste
"At that time they scattered lime along and over the trench to stop the smell, but that was the last time we noticed anyone from the municipality in the area to clean the waste."

Residents claim they do not receive black bags for refuse removal. "If we were to clean up the waste, where would we take it?"

There is no evidence of a skip in the area where refuse may be dumped legally. As the majority of residents in the area have no access to transport, it is preposterous to suggest that they should use the refuse transfer station at Louis Fourie Road to properly dispose of their waste.

As a result, the waste and filth is accumulating knee high in the ditch. Non-biodegradable items such as plastic bottles litter the area.

It's difficult to traverse the area where filth and effluent cover the walkway. It is virtually impossible for a small child to cross the filth without stepping in it.

The houses are built closely together with neat walkways and fences demarcating the properties. However, there is no space available for children to play, nor any demarcated playing areas. Therefore they play along the stream filled with putrid effluent. Great concerns about the health risks involved exist.

Filthy ditch
Half the community has to cross the filthy ditch to access the elementary services, such as the communal taps and the few functioning toilets. Women and children, the vulnerable members of society, have to leave their homes in the dead of night to cross the filth with no overhead lighting, simply to use the loo.

Fifteen cement structures for toilets were initially erected. The vandalism is evident. Hardly five of these still house toilets, yet these toilets are kept locked with chains and padlocks. Residents say the community banded together to fix the toilets and are keeping them behind lock and key to prevent further vandalism.

Child Protection Week runs from 27 May to 3 June, with the theme: “Let us protect all children to move South Africa forward.”

Child protection includes the creation of a safe and healthy environment for the future leaders to grow up in.

The executive mayor, Alderman Harry Levendal, members of his executive mayoral team, the municipal manager and senior staff visited the informal settlement this week to personally appraise themselves of the extent of the problem.