City urges residents to keep rivers clean

By Yamkela Xhaso
22 December 2008

The city of Cape Town is fighting an uphill battle with the polluted rivers around the city.

This is after the recent rubbish in rivers erupted in Black River. The place is known to have four endangered species where residents throw away electrical appliances in the river.

Executive Director of Transport, roads and Storm water from the City of Cape Town said the city has spends 24 million rands a year cleaning rivers.

Chinnapen said they give the function to private contractors who go to a cleaning programme. The cleaning programme is intense because flooding in winter is being avoided.

“Unfortunately the more people dump the more it gets difficult to clean up”

What they have been doing is to go to some educational campaign in the New Year to try and educate the public about the harms of dumping.

“Unfortunately residents during this time of the year they go for easier ways of dumping, they don’t want additional costs”

The Black River area is close to a sub-economic area and people dumping with out thinking about the ecology.