Broken bottles, refuse bags filled with household and garden waste and abandoned computer equipment litter most of the East Bank cemetery opposite Buffalo Park cricket ground.
Angry residents are also complaining about knee-high grass and overgrown shrubbery which covers most of the graves.
Despite numerous complaints from residents, Ward 47 councillor Siyabonga Jabavu said he was not aware of the situation.
Questions were also sent to BCM spokesman Thandy Matebese but a response had not been received at the time of writing.
Jabavu said: “Now that I know, I will follow up on the complaints and get the area sorted out as soon as possible”.
Jackie Cockroft, who works at a business situated across the street from the cemetery, said prostitutes had been seen taking clients into the cemetery, while members of the public were often mugged there.
“We sometimes hear screams coming from there and it could be someone getting mugged. Sometimes traumatised people cross the street and come here asking to call the police from our phones and we let them do so,” she said.
“What BCM does is that they come out to cut the grass once every few months and they cut it really nice and short, but then they don’t return after that; this is what causes it to look like this.”
Kathleen van der Merwe said the grass had not been cut in over a year and that vagrants were sleeping in the cemetery too.
“You can see the people who sleep there as you drive further into the cemetery. They use the area closest to the perimeter fence. I’ve also seen prostitutes going in there and people smoking drugs.
“There is garbage everywhere and the place just looks disgusting. Some of the gravestones have been broken by vandals. The cemetery has not been maintained in about a year,” she said.
When the Daily Dispatch visited the cemetery on Monday empty computer monitor shells were scattered all over the graveyard, with food packets, cut grass, empty cooldrink and alcohol bottles lining the tarred path and lying over some graves. — zisandan@dispatch.co.za
Residents in despair over ‘rubbish dump’ cemetery
Angry residents are also complaining about knee-high grass and overgrown shrubbery which covers most of the graves.
Despite numerous complaints from residents, Ward 47 councillor Siyabonga Jabavu said he was not aware of the situation.
Questions were also sent to BCM spokesman Thandy Matebese but a response had not been received at the time of writing.
Jabavu said: “Now that I know, I will follow up on the complaints and get the area sorted out as soon as possible”.
Jackie Cockroft, who works at a business situated across the street from the cemetery, said prostitutes had been seen taking clients into the cemetery, while members of the public were often mugged there.
“We sometimes hear screams coming from there and it could be someone getting mugged. Sometimes traumatised people cross the street and come here asking to call the police from our phones and we let them do so,” she said.
“What BCM does is that they come out to cut the grass once every few months and they cut it really nice and short, but then they don’t return after that; this is what causes it to look like this.”
Kathleen van der Merwe said the grass had not been cut in over a year and that vagrants were sleeping in the cemetery too.
“You can see the people who sleep there as you drive further into the cemetery. They use the area closest to the perimeter fence. I’ve also seen prostitutes going in there and people smoking drugs.
“There is garbage everywhere and the place just looks disgusting. Some of the gravestones have been broken by vandals. The cemetery has not been maintained in about a year,” she said.
When the Daily Dispatch visited the cemetery on Monday empty computer monitor shells were scattered all over the graveyard, with food packets, cut grass, empty cooldrink and alcohol bottles lining the tarred path and lying over some graves. — zisandan@dispatch.co.za
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