The Buffalo City Metro cleaning initiative that has kept the East London Settlers Way and and the beachfront clean, has been renewed by three years as the metro and the Border Kei Chamber of Business (BKCOB) attempt to attract tourists to the city.
A new memorandum of understanding between BCM, BKCOB and the BCM Development Agency was approved in the council in December to start from December 2018 to November 2021.
And while the city is highly challenged with waste management, the new agreement only focuses on “two critical areas” – Settlers Way and the beachfront.
Call-2-Action, as the initiative is known, was first entered into in 2016 following private and public outcry about the “unpleasant state of cleanliness of the BCM”.
Bob Naidoo, head of BCM corporate services, said: “The project focuses on grass cutting and vegetation control in Settlers Way and at the beachfront. Through this initiative, the BCM buy-back centre was revived.
“Between February 2017 and January 2018 a total of 400 tons of recyclables were processed at the buy-back centre. During the same period, small, medium and micro-sized enterprises (SMMEs) were paid about R360,000 for their recyclables. It is the intention of this initiative to open more sites in the metro and expand its footprint to the midlands and inland regions.”
Speaking to the Daily Dispatch this week, BKCOB executive director Les Holbrook said the state of the two areas had improved by 80% since the project started in 2016.
“The project is mainly driven by our members. When it started, they donated R1m to pay for a service provider to do the job. It is supervised and managed by the business sector.”
There are dedicated companies that are making this possible and currently we have R500,000 funding,” Holbrook said.
Asked why BCM needed help to do its job of cleaning the city, BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya said: “This is a huge task which cannot be done by business or the municipality alone, it requires us to work together. We are all partners in ensuring that our economy grows in the city.”..