By Nangamso Mabindla
6 November 2007

SPURRED by the increasing number of complaints about litter in East London, especially in Southernwood, Buffalo City's department of solid waste has teamed up with its partners to tackle the problem.

The department has started a four-day clean-up campaign to encourage residents to keep their suburbs clean. Its Nosi Skweyiya said the campaign would focus on the areas hit hardest by littering.

"We [have] received so many complaints, especially about the amount of littering happening in Southernwood and the Quigney," said Skweyiya. The municipality had visited the areas to verify the litter problem.

"People think the municipality does not collect refuse, but we have also found out that there are other factors that contribute to this."

Some of the factors that contributed to increased littering included illegal accommodation, the amount of shebeens, and residents not using the municipality's collection times.

"In Southernwood there are a lot of shebeens that are zoned as houses; these create a lot of waste but are not billed as businesses. There is also illegal accommodation and some of these people don't know our refuse collection times," she added.

"Southernwood also has a lot of rented houses and [tenants] change all the time; this poses a problem for us because the new tenants are not aware of our collection times."

However, despite these challenges Skweyiya said that her department would work with the City's land administration department, the environmental health department, law enforcement and ward committees to ensure that the suburbs were clean.

"We have asked the community to work with us … and we will continue to ask them to join us during this campaign."

Skweyiya said that during the campaign the municipality would also encourage people to stop leaving refuse on the streets when they miss the municipal refuse collection truck.