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INLSA<\/p>\n
Workers from the eThekwini municipality begin repair work on sewerage pipes, near Parlock, damaged this week by people sifting through the effluent looking for treasure .Photo: Lauren Rawlins<\/p>\n
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Durban – People desperate for any item of value they can find to sell are smashing open Durban\u2019s sewerage pipes and sifting through the sewage in the mistaken belief that there might be \u201ctreasure\u201d inside. <\/p>\n
In the most recent incident this week, Bart Fokkens of the Duzi uMngeni Conservation Trust was clearing up the trail for the coming Dusi-To-Sea cycling race when he discovered sewage pouring from the pipes and seeping through to the uMgeni River in Parlock, near Newlands West. <\/p>\n
The city has now declared the river unsafe for swimming but said the sea was unaffected even though some sewage would have been washed out of the river mouth near Durban\u2019s Golden Mile. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to investigate, I saw the pipes had been vandalised and I contacted the municipality, which responded immediately,\u201d said Fokkens. <\/p>\n
\u00a0 <\/p>\n
City employees had their hands full on Thursday, starting the repair work and pumping the sewage into another manhole to prevent pollution and harm to those living in the area. <\/p>\n
Neil Macleod, head of water and sanitation for the municipality, said it was \u201cimpossible\u201d to have security guards permanently monitoring the pipes because there were too many. <\/p>\n
It would take days, if not weeks, to repair the damaged pipe, Macleod said. He said the city was forced to fix the pipes again and again as they were targeted at least once a week. <\/p>\n
\u201cLast week a pipe was destroyed in Chatsworth. And the same thing happened two weeks back in Phoenix. It is obviously a gang and we will catch them. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trying to find a contractor at the moment (to assist with repairing the pipe in Parlock),\u201d said Macleod. <\/p>\n
He said the municipality was relying on the community to inform it if they saw people who weren\u2019t dressed in metro uniforms \u201cworking\u201d on the sewerage pipes. <\/p>\n
\u00a0 <\/p>\n
\u201cThe gangs are looking for any items that are dropped down the sink or accidentally flushed down the toilet. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you dropped money, diamonds or gold, they will destroy the pipes, searching for these items,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
The vandals apparently arrive in big numbers, remove the concrete slabs on top of the pipes and then bash them open with hammers. <\/p>\n
They then use spades to scoop out the dirt and \u201ctake their time\u201d to find any precious items. The Mercury understands the city is planning to use heavy concrete slabs in future that can only be <\/p>\n
lifted by heavy machinery. <\/p>\n
lungelo.mkamba@inl.co.za <\/p>\n
The Mercury<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" INLSA Workers from the eThekwini municipality begin repair work on sewerage pipes, near Parlock, damaged this week by people sifting through the effluent looking for treasure .Photo: Lauren Rawlins Durban – People desperate for any item of value they can find to sell are smashing open Durban\u2019s sewerage pipes and sifting through the sewage in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8275,953,2143],"class_list":{"0":"post-19982","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-durban","8":"tag-newspaper","9":"tag-the-mercury","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}