A quigney resident is on a one-woman crusade to clean up her neighbourhood, which she said was awash with filth and rats, with nowhere to discard rubbish.Beverley Lottering, who moved to her Inverleith Terrace home in July, became so frustrated with garbage clogging gutters on her street that she decided to solve the problem herself and placed a request on Facebook for help.
“People passing by have nowhere to throw their rubbish and when black bags are put out, rats, dogs and people tear them open and everything is spread all over.”
The result of her social media quest was a donation of eight blue 45-gallon drums which now dot two blocks of her road, and are in good use.
“The drums were donated by Buffalo Scrap Metal and then I had their bases filled with cement so that they don’t get stolen,” said Lottering, who runs a security company.
“I put the drums out on Saturday at 9am and by 9.30am they were full.”
However, when she asked a BCM refuse removal truck that was collecting household rubbish in the area later that day to empty the bins, she was turned down.
“They said it was not their job, so I have been putting black bags in the bins and when they are full I put them next to the bins and then they took them.”
Lottering said she would have preferred to have erected swing bins in the area, which would have been easier to empty, but could not afford to do so and has asked the city’s business community to come to the party.
“The problem is also that we are not given black bags by the municipality so I have to pay for the bags.”
She said when she moved to the neighbourhood, gutters were choked with weeds and rubbish and, when she got no joy from city officials, she phoned the mayor.
“I explained what I was doing, but said I could not do it all because the streets are full of weeds.
“So they cleared my block, but left the rest. I messaged the mayor to say ‘thank you, but what about the rest of the gutters?’
“Rubbish is everyone’s problem because it attracts rats and clogs up the stormwater drains and then sewage bubbles up in the streets and children have to walk through it.”
She said she could not understand why a public space like Ebuhlanti was cleaned every day, while Quigney residents had to live with rubbish-strewn streets.
“The people coming to party and braai there are not residents of the Quigney, yet they benefit from services from BCM, while I have to live in a rubbish dump,” she wrote in a letter to the Dispatch’s letters page.
DA PR councillor for Ward 47, Wiekie Barnard, said she would be meeting with an official from the solid waste department regarding wheelie bins and other waste disposal issues.
BCM spokesman Thandy Matebese said he had directed Dispatch queries to the solid waste department, which had not responded at the time of writing.
On a mission to clean up rubbish-strewn Quigney
Beverley Lottering, who moved to her Inverleith Terrace home in July, became so frustrated with garbage clogging gutters on her street that she decided to solve the problem herself and placed a request on Facebook for help.
“People passing by have nowhere to throw their rubbish and when black bags are put out, rats, dogs and people tear them open and everything is spread all over.”
The result of her social media quest was a donation of eight blue 45-gallon drums which now dot two blocks of her road, and are in good use.
“The drums were donated by Buffalo Scrap Metal and then I had their bases filled with cement so that they don’t get stolen,” said Lottering, who runs a security company.
“I put the drums out on Saturday at 9am and by 9.30am they were full.”
However, when she asked a BCM refuse removal truck that was collecting household rubbish in the area later that day to empty the bins, she was turned down.
“They said it was not their job, so I have been putting black bags in the bins and when they are full I put them next to the bins and then they took them.”
Lottering said she would have preferred to have erected swing bins in the area, which would have been easier to empty, but could not afford to do so and has asked the city’s business community to come to the party.
“The problem is also that we are not given black bags by the municipality so I have to pay for the bags.”
She said when she moved to the neighbourhood, gutters were choked with weeds and rubbish and, when she got no joy from city officials, she phoned the mayor.
“I explained what I was doing, but said I could not do it all because the streets are full of weeds.
“So they cleared my block, but left the rest. I messaged the mayor to say ‘thank you, but what about the rest of the gutters?’
“Rubbish is everyone’s problem because it attracts rats and clogs up the stormwater drains and then sewage bubbles up in the streets and children have to walk through it.”
She said she could not understand why a public space like Ebuhlanti was cleaned every day, while Quigney residents had to live with rubbish-strewn streets.
“The people coming to party and braai there are not residents of the Quigney, yet they benefit from services from BCM, while I have to live in a rubbish dump,” she wrote in a letter to the Dispatch’s letters page.
DA PR councillor for Ward 47, Wiekie Barnard, said she would be meeting with an official from the solid waste department regarding wheelie bins and other waste disposal issues.
BCM spokesman Thandy Matebese said he had directed Dispatch queries to the solid waste department, which had not responded at the time of writing.
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