William Matsheke, member of the Green Crew
The GRA-sponsored Green Crew continues to do a great job of keeping Greenside clean and tidy. The crew of William Matsheke, Tobias Moyo and Themba Matema work every Friday, brushcutting overgrown grass and weeds, mowing, picking up litter, cleaning illegal dumping, sweeping, raking and tidying up around our suburb.
Funded by the GRA and community donations, the Green Crew was initially established to help to beautify our suburb by creating garden beds and planting along pavements. However, the team only has the capacity to do general maintenance that should be provided by the City. We hope that in future the City will be able to provide these services and our small team of three can focus on enhancements to Greenside.
To keep the grass and weeds in our parks and on our pavements under control – especially with all this rain we have been having – the GRA bought a heavy duty brushcutter. This was supplemented by community members Ayesha and Yaasir Haffejee’s generous donation of a heavy-duty lawnmower – thanks so much Ayesha and Yaasir!
You can assist us to keep Greenside clean and green by making sure your gardeners are not dumping your garden refuse in the road reserves and next to public bins. We have found that a number of the bags dumped in our suburb actually come from nearby houses. There seems to be an assumption that the municipality will pick these up, but unfortunately that is not the case. Please ensure you dispose of your garden refuse yourselves (you can drop off your garden refuse at the Pikitup Garden site on Victory Rd). This would help us to create a suburb that we can all be proud to call home.
If you are looking for a gardener, consider employing one of the hard-working team of William, Tobias and Themba. They are keen for more work and come with excellent references.
We are urgently in need of heavy-duty refuse bags and various garden tools (rakes, brooms, clippers, forks). We are also always in need of funds to run the Green Crew project. Please get in touch if you are able to donate to this initiative or use our bank account and use green as reference and email your details to greening@gra.org.za so we can acknowledge your contribution.
Thanks to all of you who are supporting the Green Crew through paying your GRA subs, through donations and by supplying lunches and black bags. It makes a huge difference to our suburb and to our team of workers.
Gillian Jones
Chair Greening Committee
