Dear Editor
The DA in the Dr Beyers Naude Municipality has laid criminal charges against the municipality due to its inability to manage landfill sites, which have now become hazardous to residents.
On Friday, 1 December 2023, I laid charges at the Graaff-Reinet police station under the National Environmental Management: Waste Act, 2008 (Act No. 59 of 2008) because the Municipality has failed to fulfil a general duty in respect of waste management.
On Thursday last week, residents of Graaff-Reinet were forced to endure a suffocating pall of smoke blowing across the town. The noxious smoke emanated from the uncontrolled fires burning at the municipal waste transfer station.
The waste transfer station stood closed for a year due to complete mismanagement where the extent of the rubbish became unmanageable and a woman lost her life. Instead of providing a sorting facility to remove the recycling material from wet waste, the station stood empty.
This all changed on 1 November 2023, when the Municipality issued a notice that its landfill site had been closed and that all refuse must now be dumped at the waste transfer station. The reason for the closure of the landfill site was that no refuse was being dumped at the actual landfill site. Instead, the access road had been used as a dumping site to the extent that it was impassable. Were one able to actually pass, the tip dwellers were so aggressive, that people were too scared to venture closer. By the end of October, the access road was completely blocked and the link road between the N9 and Kendrew Road had become the new dump site and had become impassable. Even municipal refuse trucks were dumping on the road. The landfill site also burns every day.
Within a month after the announcement that all rubbish must now be dumped at the waste transfer site, it has become a seething mass of rubbish, tip dwellers and endless spirals of toxic smoke polluting the air.
A number of complaints were made to the Department of Economic Development, Environmental Affairs and Tourism, but were unsuccessful. We therefore had no choice but to lay criminal charges.
The Municipality is obligated, not only to fulfil its service delivery mandate in respect of waste management, but also to ensure that it is done in an environmentally sound manner which protects the health of its residents.
The DA will not falter in its fight to rescue the residents of Dr Beyers Naude from municipal mismanagement.
Regards
Samantha Graham-Maré MP
Dr Beyers Naude Constituency Leader