Our rubbish bin is still sitting in dejection on the pavement where it has been since last week, but at least it's not lonely because in Upper Town everybody’s bins are also parked on unkempt verges — and this is the case for most suburbs in Knysna.
On my daily jog up the hill to Rio Drive in Knysna Heights, I was nearly asphyxiated by one bin in particular.
Must have had baby-pooh nappies or something evil in it. It literally took my breath away, it was that disgusting.
It’s a stinking situation in Knysna, which is fast getting the reputation of being a filthy little town.
The only happy campers at this point are the African sacred ibis birds which are as overjoyed as proverbial pigs in s@#$.
It’s so much easier for them to poke those long beaks through black bags and find all sorts of grub and leftovers rather than chasing crickets or hunting for their normal diet.
Then of course let’s not forget the plague of rats in the town ... they have become grateful connoisseurs of the plentiful fast-food menu available on pavements and in the CBD.
They are the size of dassies and roam the town. You cannot go out at night without seeing them prowling the streets.
In one restaurant, they run right through it. On the way home from the Waterfront up Long Street, it is pretty much guaranteed we will see them.
Just for the heck of it, I said to Mark perhaps I have exaggerated the rat infestation, but blow me down if we didn’t see two of them in a couple in minutes.
While the Bubonic plague wasn’t actually caused by rats, it is well documented that these rodents and their fleas were thought to have spread a series of outbreaks in 14th-19th Century Europe.
The rats and their fleas carry a germ and all it takes for sickness is for one of the rat’s fleas to bite a human.
Desperate vagrants, very often they take to rummaging through the bins on the pavements, leaving what they don’t want thrown on the verge. All very unhygienic.
The refuse woes in this town have been ongoing since last year ( among issues like water outages which has been escalated from municipal to provincial level) and from a resident’s perspective it is fair to say that the situation only seems to worsen.
There are actually two ongoing issues here: Residents’ bins aren’t fetched by the municipality on the day they announce it will be fetched.
We are all used to the bins parking off until Father Christmas or the Easter bunny decide to pay a visit.
Gone are the days when it was collected on the day the municipality says its truck will come.
The other huge problem is the main rubbish dump in the town near Waterfront Drive where the municipality turfs the rubbish after it actually collects it.
It’s supposed to go to Mossel Bay, but instead a mountain of putrid material is gathering here again.
Oddly enough, just before the tourist season started in December, the municipality did manage to get rid of the mountain, but I guess the tourists are gone and so have the Santa and his sleigh of trucks.
What this means is that this is a foul-smelling town.
Restaurants near the main dump on Waterfront Drive are long past apoplectic with rage.
There is one award-winning and very popular restaurant right near this dump which is suffering particularly badly.
Eating in a rank toilet isn’t for the faint-hearted.
I had lunch last week with a friend and we always used to frequent this place.
She suggested we give it a miss (even though it’s a place where you can bring your own booze and this helps if you drink expensive sparkling wine) because of the odour, but also the flies which of course thrive in this environment.
The place we ended up going to is located next to one of Knysna’s iconic and expensive department stores but was not immune to the fetid breeze blowing right off the rubbish mountain.
Restaurants are losing customers and money.
We had tourists from America staying with us and they were absolutely flabbergasted when they smelt this town and saw the dump.
Just imagine the impression this town’s valued overseas visitors get and the stories they tell back in their home countries of such a pretty little town that reeks.
We have friends who live in the Knysna Quays and depending on the way the wind is blowing, they are also affected.
It’s a shame because people who spent a lot of money to live right on the estuary near Waterfront Drive are subjected to a pong rather than the lovely estuarine smell.
How is this situation even possible is the question residents are asking as they are fast losing the plot and taking to various WhatsApp groups and social media to vent.
Councillors in Ward 10 and Ward 11 say their hands are tied and their lives must surely be hell as they deal with irate ratepayers.
During electricity outages, an active citizen who actually phones the municipality daily to get updates and stays on their case is greeted by a municipal number that says it is full and can’t take more messages.
Have a look at the Knysna Municipality Facebook page and various social media platforms and there are hundreds of furious comments.
A resident contacted Ward 10 councillor Peter Bester this week and this is the voice message Bester left: “A large area of Ward 10 is still not collected. Still waiting for answers ... asked the portfolio chair and the director and the manager and nobody is answering me.
“Today they did the Monday route, but what about backlog, no answers, trying, but struggling to get answers.”
In one WhatsApp Upper Town group chat the rubbish truck has been dubbed Wally and as soon as someone in the area sees it, they tell other residents it’s in the area. Would be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful.
Some of the comments on the Knysna Municipality Facebook page speak aptly to the situation.
“And nothing further about the backlogs. Unacceptable there is no communication,” Julie Seton writes.
Talana Oosthuizen van Zyl says; “Can’t deliver a basic service namely refuse collection.”
Lucy Wood says; “#ineffectual#useless#despised.
Anne Munro asks; “maybe if we need to go drop our refuse off at the municipal offices to get it collected,” and Denise Wessels, among others, says, “this sounds like a very good idea.”
Terry Cohen says: “I last saw my bin walking towards Clyde Street [in town] carried on the back of maggots.”
Michelle van Wyk: “Vagrants are making a huge mess due to refuse not being collected.
“Please get this sorted out as we pay our refuse bills. Why is this an ongoing issue ... rats and maggots are not! It’s a human right.”
This whole saga is just unimaginable to me.
I lived in Asia where if you so much as drop a piece of litter on the ground in Singapore you will be punished.
In Istanbul, there were big bins in every street. It was as simple as dropping your daily bag of litter into this big container and it was emptied every day, but then Turkey even cleans its verges and sprays the streets to discourage mosquitos.
OK, so then coming back just to the Garden Route, how come Oudtshoorn is pristine? Plett isn’t a pigsty and neither is George.
I hear there are a group of very disgruntled residents who are contemplating dumping their rubbish on the steps of the Knysna municipality.
I heard an interesting discussion this week about following the action of residents of Hornlee and this part of town which has been dealing with their ongoing water outages for weeks ... they burn tyres and close the N2 from Knysna to Plett at Nekkies.
This kind of behaviour is obviously not acceptable, but what must Knysna residents do to be heard?
The latest update from the municipality (February 13) was on their Facebook page.
It reads verbatim, “Unfortunately, today’s route on the normal schedule will not be collected. The team is catching up on the backlog from yesterday.
“An update on when today’s schedule [will] be collected, will be communicated in due course. For further inquiries please contact Waste Management at 044-302-6405 during working hours and 044-302-8911 or 060-998-6969 after hours.” #inclusive#innovative#inspired
HeraldLIVE
Knysna fast degenerating into a filthy little town
Rubbish woes have been ongoing since last year and seem to be getting worse
Image: MARK TAYLOR
Our rubbish bin is still sitting in dejection on the pavement where it has been since last week, but at least it's not lonely because in Upper Town everybody’s bins are also parked on unkempt verges — and this is the case for most suburbs in Knysna.
On my daily jog up the hill to Rio Drive in Knysna Heights, I was nearly asphyxiated by one bin in particular.
Must have had baby-pooh nappies or something evil in it. It literally took my breath away, it was that disgusting.
It’s a stinking situation in Knysna, which is fast getting the reputation of being a filthy little town.
The only happy campers at this point are the African sacred ibis birds which are as overjoyed as proverbial pigs in s@#$.
It’s so much easier for them to poke those long beaks through black bags and find all sorts of grub and leftovers rather than chasing crickets or hunting for their normal diet.
Then of course let’s not forget the plague of rats in the town ... they have become grateful connoisseurs of the plentiful fast-food menu available on pavements and in the CBD.
They are the size of dassies and roam the town. You cannot go out at night without seeing them prowling the streets.
In one restaurant, they run right through it. On the way home from the Waterfront up Long Street, it is pretty much guaranteed we will see them.
Just for the heck of it, I said to Mark perhaps I have exaggerated the rat infestation, but blow me down if we didn’t see two of them in a couple in minutes.
While the Bubonic plague wasn’t actually caused by rats, it is well documented that these rodents and their fleas were thought to have spread a series of outbreaks in 14th-19th Century Europe.
The rats and their fleas carry a germ and all it takes for sickness is for one of the rat’s fleas to bite a human.
Desperate vagrants, very often they take to rummaging through the bins on the pavements, leaving what they don’t want thrown on the verge. All very unhygienic.
The refuse woes in this town have been ongoing since last year ( among issues like water outages which has been escalated from municipal to provincial level) and from a resident’s perspective it is fair to say that the situation only seems to worsen.
There are actually two ongoing issues here: Residents’ bins aren’t fetched by the municipality on the day they announce it will be fetched.
We are all used to the bins parking off until Father Christmas or the Easter bunny decide to pay a visit.
Gone are the days when it was collected on the day the municipality says its truck will come.
The other huge problem is the main rubbish dump in the town near Waterfront Drive where the municipality turfs the rubbish after it actually collects it.
It’s supposed to go to Mossel Bay, but instead a mountain of putrid material is gathering here again.
Oddly enough, just before the tourist season started in December, the municipality did manage to get rid of the mountain, but I guess the tourists are gone and so have the Santa and his sleigh of trucks.
What this means is that this is a foul-smelling town.
Restaurants near the main dump on Waterfront Drive are long past apoplectic with rage.
There is one award-winning and very popular restaurant right near this dump which is suffering particularly badly.
Eating in a rank toilet isn’t for the faint-hearted.
I had lunch last week with a friend and we always used to frequent this place.
She suggested we give it a miss (even though it’s a place where you can bring your own booze and this helps if you drink expensive sparkling wine) because of the odour, but also the flies which of course thrive in this environment.
The place we ended up going to is located next to one of Knysna’s iconic and expensive department stores but was not immune to the fetid breeze blowing right off the rubbish mountain.
Restaurants are losing customers and money.
We had tourists from America staying with us and they were absolutely flabbergasted when they smelt this town and saw the dump.
Just imagine the impression this town’s valued overseas visitors get and the stories they tell back in their home countries of such a pretty little town that reeks.
We have friends who live in the Knysna Quays and depending on the way the wind is blowing, they are also affected.
It’s a shame because people who spent a lot of money to live right on the estuary near Waterfront Drive are subjected to a pong rather than the lovely estuarine smell.
How is this situation even possible is the question residents are asking as they are fast losing the plot and taking to various WhatsApp groups and social media to vent.
Councillors in Ward 10 and Ward 11 say their hands are tied and their lives must surely be hell as they deal with irate ratepayers.
During electricity outages, an active citizen who actually phones the municipality daily to get updates and stays on their case is greeted by a municipal number that says it is full and can’t take more messages.
Have a look at the Knysna Municipality Facebook page and various social media platforms and there are hundreds of furious comments.
A resident contacted Ward 10 councillor Peter Bester this week and this is the voice message Bester left: “A large area of Ward 10 is still not collected. Still waiting for answers ... asked the portfolio chair and the director and the manager and nobody is answering me.
“Today they did the Monday route, but what about backlog, no answers, trying, but struggling to get answers.”
In one WhatsApp Upper Town group chat the rubbish truck has been dubbed Wally and as soon as someone in the area sees it, they tell other residents it’s in the area. Would be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful.
Some of the comments on the Knysna Municipality Facebook page speak aptly to the situation.
“And nothing further about the backlogs. Unacceptable there is no communication,” Julie Seton writes.
Talana Oosthuizen van Zyl says; “Can’t deliver a basic service namely refuse collection.”
Lucy Wood says; “#ineffectual#useless#despised.
Anne Munro asks; “maybe if we need to go drop our refuse off at the municipal offices to get it collected,” and Denise Wessels, among others, says, “this sounds like a very good idea.”
Terry Cohen says: “I last saw my bin walking towards Clyde Street [in town] carried on the back of maggots.”
Michelle van Wyk: “Vagrants are making a huge mess due to refuse not being collected.
“Please get this sorted out as we pay our refuse bills. Why is this an ongoing issue ... rats and maggots are not! It’s a human right.”
This whole saga is just unimaginable to me.
I lived in Asia where if you so much as drop a piece of litter on the ground in Singapore you will be punished.
In Istanbul, there were big bins in every street. It was as simple as dropping your daily bag of litter into this big container and it was emptied every day, but then Turkey even cleans its verges and sprays the streets to discourage mosquitos.
OK, so then coming back just to the Garden Route, how come Oudtshoorn is pristine? Plett isn’t a pigsty and neither is George.
I hear there are a group of very disgruntled residents who are contemplating dumping their rubbish on the steps of the Knysna municipality.
I heard an interesting discussion this week about following the action of residents of Hornlee and this part of town which has been dealing with their ongoing water outages for weeks ... they burn tyres and close the N2 from Knysna to Plett at Nekkies.
This kind of behaviour is obviously not acceptable, but what must Knysna residents do to be heard?
The latest update from the municipality (February 13) was on their Facebook page.
It reads verbatim, “Unfortunately, today’s route on the normal schedule will not be collected. The team is catching up on the backlog from yesterday.
“An update on when today’s schedule [will] be collected, will be communicated in due course. For further inquiries please contact Waste Management at 044-302-6405 during working hours and 044-302-8911 or 060-998-6969 after hours.” #inclusive#innovative#inspired
HeraldLIVE
Image: MARK TAYLOR
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