WeeklySA_AdminSTENCH: Occupants of the police barracks say garbage has not been collected for the past 11 years…
Rats, people and garbage co-exist inside several blocks of police living quarters at the Protea Glen police station in Soweto. Somewhere inside one of the blocks, the daughter of a police woman is taking care of her child and her three minor siblings who live there illegally – along with scores of other families, who have moved into the quarters without the consent of the station commander.
The barracks are dilapidated, unkempt and have no lights and sanitation facilities. Some of the buildings are in such a state disrepair that they are hardly fit for human habitation. Yet it is clear that most of the squatters have moved into the decrepit quarters just to have a roof over their heads.
One of the occupants, Beauty Hlongwane, said she had been living there since 2017, and no one had questioned them up to now, as no one seemed bothered.
Hlongwane showed the WeeklySAmirror team around, to assess the extent of squalor at the barracks. She volunteered to guide the team despite having no authority to do so.
“It’s like staying in the rural areas; there are no lights in the corridors and outside the buildings,” Hlongwane said, pointing at the damaged electricity lights.
She took the team to several half-empty rooms with beds only, yet, strangely, their occupants were nowhere in sight. A police reservist, who said he had been staying there for a month, told WeeklySAmirror she moved into one of the rooms with his girlfriend.
“I fetched my girlfriend from home when realised that most of the police here stay with their families,” he said, smiling, before his girlfriend opened the door for him. On the third floor, a young man who did not want to reveal his name, said his policeman father left him there when he retired from the SAPS five years ago.
“I’m not the only one,” he said showing the team other rooms occupied by children of retired and deceased police officers.
Outside, the team encountered a boy carrying a bucket of water he had fetched from another section of the living quarters, since the block occupied by his family had no running water. He said the sewerage system had not been working since 2010.
By the way, no one asked the WeeklySAmirror team to identify itself when we arrived. The team just drove in, walked around, took pictures and conducted interviews without any hassle.
NO CONTROL, NOBODY CARES.
Another occupant, Alex Ndou (not his real name) said the residents had written several letters to senior officials since 2010, complaining about the state of the quarters, but no one had bothered to listen to their grievances.
“I can’t wait to retire and go back home to Limpopo,” said a 56-year-old man, pointing at a heap of rubbish nestling on the roof of a lower floor.
He said stinking garbage overflowing from the waste bins had not been collected since 2010, even though their finance department continued to deduct their levies for the maintenance of the place. Ndou said they were told that the maintenance contract with Johannesburg City Municipality’s
Pikitup waste management service had ended some time back, but had not been renewed.
“We have to burn garbage. Those who have cars sometimes carry litter and dump it at nearby dumping places,” he said. “This is why this place (the barracks) looks like a dumping place,” he said. Two blocks destroyed by fire between 2002 and 2014, were yet to be renovated.
He said January this year the residents were greeted by a notice on the walls, warning them to vacate the premises by the end of June.
“We also don’t know whether they will continue debiting the levies or if they’ll ever refund the money debited from our pay without providing any service”.
