Who is responsible for cleaning the town?

“The waste management by-laws say that land owners are responsible for cleaning their own land,” says waste management division head, Joshua Hlapa at the Lephalale Municipality.
Land owners in Lephalale are unhappy with members of the public dumping rubbish on their land and with the municipality, which holds land owners responsible for the mess.
Community Policing Forum chairman, Thys Eloff says that in his capacity as a land owner he has personally provided refuse bags and employed people to clean trash off his land outside Lephalale on the Marken road and he is still waiting for the municipality to come collect the bags.
Hlapa said that the only suggestion that the municipality can give land owners is to fence off their land and clean it up regularly. “The municipality is not responsible for cleaning privately-owned land.”
Project manager for Lephalale Mall, JV Moolman, says the problem is that members of the public are littering and dumping their trash anywhere and the municipality is not doing anything about it.
A specific section of land owned by the Moolman group, UNIQON and Flanagan & Gerard behind KFC in Onverwacht is an eyesore – the area is filthy and littered with plastic, cans and tins. It is also used as a toilet by passers-by.
Moolman says that the municipality is willing to clean the area if they pay the municipality for their services.
“If we see a littered vacant stand, we identify the owner and issue them with a non-compliance notice with a time frame in which to rectify the situation – if they request that the municipality clean up their land, tariffs are added to their account,” Hlapa said.
Hlapa also mentioned that provincial roads are not their responsibility to clean but those of the provincial government. - Tebogo Tlhako (tebogo@noordnuus.co.za)