Government has defended the mushrooming of landfill or dumping sites in areas of low-income earners. Some residents living near the terrible-smelling landfill sites say these solid waste facilities are a painful reminder of the apartheid spatial arrangement.
They have decried the fact that even post-1994, the placement of the dumpsites is only located in black communities and low-income neighbourhoods.
However, speaking to the SABC News earlier on Friday during a clean-up campaign in Mangaung where another landfill site is to be built, Minister of Environmental Affairs Barbara Creecy says landfill sites in the country need to be compliant with the city by-laws.
Creecy says, “Well I suppose the issue is that we all know our cities have expanded, so perhaps once a long time ago those landfill sites were far from the communities and now the communities have expanded.”
“Problems of bad smell and so on happen when landfill sites are not properly aligned, when there isn’t proper water drainage system and also off course if you go to any well-managed landfill you will see TLBs (Bell Backhoe Loader) working there on a daily basis covering the rubbish and I think that is where the management of the landfill breaks down that you will start to see a very negative impact on communities,” She adds.
Clean-up campaign in Mangaung ahead of Presidential Imbizo – Natasha Phiri updates:
