Illegal dumping in the Laudium area, continues to be of great concern for residents living in the area, with residents once more calling on the local authority to open the now closed dumping site in Valhalla, so that waste such as building rubble and extra garbage can be dumped there.

This follows a number of complaints sent to the Laudium Sun each week from frustrated residents, complaining about people dumping in front of their homes or street corners and in front of businesses. In one of the latest complaints received, the Patel family of Emerald Street, have appealed to people to stop throwing rubbish in front of their yard. Homeowner Ravin Patel told the Laudium Sun, “The illegal dumping outside our house started a long time ago and the smell from the dump is unbearable. There are signs there saying ‘no dumping’, but people choose to ignore the signs and they still come and dump their rubbish here, causing a health hazard for me and my family. We can’t even take a chair and sit outside for a minute to breathe fresh air because of the smell from the illegal dumping which is unbearable. Many houses on Emerald Street have clean fronts, but outside our home it is filthy. We are ashamed to even invite visitors to our home because of the dump outside. Ever since I started staying here with my family, the people in the area have been illegally dumping in front of our house. We have put up many signs pleading with the community not to dump in front of our house and have even cordoned off the area, but that also did not work. We have complained so many times to the Council and the Councillor but the problem is still carrying on. People don’t listen and now we don’t know what else to do. This is the sad story and I always tell people not to dump here but they still do and most of the time they dump their rubbish in front of us, even while we watch them and take videos and pictures. They are not ashamed or even scared and they still dump rubbish in front of our house. I am now again appealing to everyone to please stop dumping garbage in front of our yard because this is causing a health hazard for me and my family and we can’t live like this. We are not animals, we are human. Treat us as such. How would you feel if someone else had done to you what you doing to us? Imagine the front of your house being a dumping site,” Ravin said. Ravin’s wife, Rashmi added, “This illegal dumping is affecting me and my family badly and this illegal dumping has caused us to be sick many times. We have been to the doctors on many occasions because of it, causing us to fork out money for medication each time, which is very expensive. We do not have money laying around and have to work hard to earn just to survive. Now we must spend money meant for groceries on medication and removing the rubbish each time, only for it to be piled up again within days. The insensitive people who are dumping here come mostly at night when we are asleep and when we wake up in the morning we see rubbish of all kinds in front of our yard and also we are greeted with a bad smell coming from the rubbish instead of fresh air. At times there are also dead animals dumped in front of our yard.” Councillor Prajay Ramjee said, “Many residents living in the Laudium area fed up with this illegal dumping all over, especially dumping in front of people’s houses like this one on Emerald Street. As concerned residents we came here on numerous occasions and cleaned up the place but a few days later the place is full of rubbish again. We have cleaned over and over again and we also put up signs saying ‘No dumping and if found dumping, a fine of R1500 would be imposed’, but people are still dumping here and are ignoring the signs. We investigated as to who were the culprits of this illegal dumping and were surprised to learn that some shops in the CBD are paying these nyaope guys R5 to dump their extra rubbish. This is a serious problem and we really need to enforce by laws in our suburb to come down hard on residents causing a problem for others. We are now planning to clean this site used for illegal dumping after which we plan to put concrete furniture and make it a nice beautiful area for people to sit, and hopefully then people will think twice about dumping in this area,” Prajay said.

Prajay added, “We have a problem with some people in Laudium stealing flowers. In most of the areas where we clean dumping areas and plant flowers, we later discover that those plants have been stolen. Now we have decided as a volunteer group that instead we will put nice concrete furniture for people to sit and enjoy, so as to avoid illegal dumping. We are pleading with people to stop illegal dumping and to check their schedule of waste collection to avoid illegal dumping or we can get the Metro police to enforce by-laws now,” Prajay concluded