Cape Town - City of Cape Town mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis launched a city-wide cleanup campaign on Wednesday in a bid to create clean communities around the city.
The campaign kicked off in Mitchell’s Plain, where the mayor swept the streets in support of various ward councillors and residents.
“Today, we’re starting with a major city-wide Clean-Up Campaign in Mitchell’s Plain Town Centre. Throughout the next couple of months, I invite every Capetonian to join me on this campaign in various parts of our beautiful city and do their part too to Keep Cape Town Clean Together.
“In the January Adjustment Budget, we have allocated R5 million for a City-wide clean-up campaign. Residents deserve clean communities, and I hope that with a consistent educational campaign, we can turn the tide and change behaviour,” Hill-Lewis said.
According to the mayor, more than 180 000 tons of waste is cleared annually from illegal dumping hotspots city-wide. He says that illegal dumping costs the City more than R300 million.
“Keeping our city clean is a high priority because a clean space creates openness and opportunity. The vision I’ve spoken about for this beautiful City is to create a sense of civic pride and have all residents get involved in looking after their communities to ensure that the City is neat and tidy for all,” the mayor added.
The grassroots political party, Cape Coloured Congress, commended the mayor for launching this campaign, particularly in Mitchells Plain, while also urging the municipality to do more for the disadvantaged communities in Cape Town.
“The new mayor has done in a few months what his predecessors have ignored for decades. It was due to the prompting of the Cape Coloured Congress to the City of Cape Town to pay attention to the Town Centre that brought this about,” they said.
“While the mayor is definitely an upgrade of what came before him, we demand more from him. We remind the mayor that the Cape Flats is his voting base and that ‘coloured’ people don’t reside in Mitchell’s Plain alone. He needs to show the same commitment to the rest of the Cape Flats and every other suburb where the long-suffering people continue to eke out an existence,” they added.
IOL