Pretoria - By collaborating with football payers to help clean up communities, the City of Tshwane's push to change a culture of littering and promote recycling may finally be realised.
This is according to Roads and Transport MMC Dikeledi Selowa, who yesterday joined forces with players from Sekhukhune United Football Club and soft drink company aQuelle Khula to host a clean-up campaign in Atteridgeville.
Both old and young rolled up their sleeves, laced up their boots and worked shoulder to shoulder with the likes of beloved veteran midfielder Willard Katsande, to pick up waste from the streets, fields, bridges and streams.
A proud Selowa said the City had been hosting mass clean-up campaigns on every last Friday of the month for some time, and had been getting great results and feedback.
They had decided to amplify the campaign to attract more interest, and mobilise more people to join in, she said.
“Waste is not just waste, but an opportunity for recycling. Such initiatives seek to raise awareness… to change how communities view waste.
“Moreover, the campaign educates communities about the significance of keeping their environment clean and neat, and (about) coming together to clean their neighbourhoods frequently,” she said.
“We have been carrying out these clean-ups in all seven regions of Tshwane. In terms of Region 3, we have cleaned up Holy Trinity Church and Kalafong Hospital. We also had our urban forestry team remove bushes there.
"We have come to this area because there are a lot of informal settlements in close proximity, and there is a lot of illegal dumping. This is based on where we see there is a need and where various complaints are lodged by the community,” Selowa said.
Katsande said it was a beautiful sight to see people grab refuse bags, don gloves and pick up litter.
"Obviously we are aware that as role models we have an influence in people's lives, and this is… us trying our level best to use our influence positively.
“Even when we are gone, we want them to continue this habit, to ensure that their community is clean, so even the children adopt the behaviour to ensure their environment is clean and safe," said Katsande.
Club coach Kaitano Tembo said it was great to see such a good turnout. Attracting people from the community to help also helped create awareness about the Sekhukhune Football Club – because it was a club from Limpopo, using its time, resources and assets to help other communities across the country.
The HR manager at aQuelle, Songelwa Gladson, said the company had also been hosting clean-up campaigns in KwaZulu-Natal, where the company was based.
Gladson said that when Tshwane reached out, they jumped at the opportunity to forge a collaboration because they were speaking the same language – that of encouraging communities to clean-up their environment and to see opportunities for recycling.
Pretoria News