eThekwini launches Sihlanzimvelo project

eThekwini Municipality has launched the Sihlanzimvelo project today which aims to help community members who live next to water courses to be able to clean and manage their areas accordingly.

The project has been launched in townships such as Umlazi, Inanda, KwaMashu and Ntuzuma so far, where community members have been given a range of management activities.

Speaking to Gagasi News, the municipality’s senior manager for climate protection, Sean o’Donoghue, said these activities include removing alien invasive plants, solid waste, managing and reporting minor erosion and clearing access to municipal infrastructure.

“The city of Durban contracts cooperatives to look after the 5kms stretches of stream and they do a number of tasks that are related to service delivery in the city so it saves the city money, provides employment for community members and improves the environment. This could be a model for African Development going forward.”

o’Donoghue says they have chosen townships because these are the places that are mostly affected by solid waste.
“These are areas that are heavily impacted by solid waste and alien invasive plants overgrowth and so the streams become unsafe for communities. This is a 300 kilometer pilot programme and what we did today was launch a project that going to look at building a business case to do this throughout the whole city so it increases the jobs coming out of it and improves the environment for the city,” said o’Donoghue.