13 Dec 2017

South East District is worried by the incidents of illegal nocturnal dumping of construction demolition waste, especially in undeveloped plots.

The South East District Council chairperson, Mr Phenyo Segokgo remarked at the council session in Ramotswa recently.

He stated that the district had seen increased cases of illegal dumping in plots and open spaces, particularly in Tlokweng, Kgale and Mokolodi areas.

He therefore pleaded with councillors and stakeholders to assume their civil duty of protecting the environment and reporting all those found unlawfully defacing the environment to relevant authorities.

Mr Segokgo said it was high time the council bought a bulldozer to help rehabilitate abandoned barrow pits and cleared illegal dumping spots mushrooming in the outskirts of Tlokweng, Kgale and Mokolodi.

Still on environment matters, he said outsourcing of residential waste collection in the entire district had been accomplished and the district had experienced improvement of waste situation.

He said litter picking in some areas was cumbersome as the council was forced to share waste management responsibilities with the contractor rather than concentrating in monitoring and supervision.

Mr Segokgo said there was need for the council to seriously consider significant budget allocation towards waste management, in the next fiscal year, in order to achieve total outsourcing of water collection services.

He stated that environmental upkeep along all major and internal roads in terms of vegetation and filled curb-side refuse bag was ongoing, but was hampered by shortage of supervisory vehicles.

Further, he said the district performed well at the national cleanest cities, towns and village competitions, where Ramotswa and Tlokweng obtained position two for the district and sub-district headquarters.

Otse took position one in large village category and Taung and Mogobane obtained position seven and four in the medium and small village categories respectively.

Still on environment issues, he stated that waste processing and covering continued to lag behind owing to mechanical breakdown of aged landfill plant and machineries and perennial absence of tipper truck.

“This has created a conducive environment for spontaneous combustion as evidenced by the recent burning of the landfill,” he stated.

He stated that the council was duty bound to seriously consider adequately resourcing the facility with the new land fill compactor and necessary machineries to ensure that operations were in conformance with the standard operating procedures as contained in the Landfill Operations Manual and International Best Practices. ENDS