MyPE

Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Summerstrand Residents Doing it for THEMSELVES

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Dear MyPE

With the sorry state of affairs our Metro finds themselves in, the grass cutting contract expired at the end of January and has never been renewed. Added to this, with the advent of Covid-19 and the closing of beaches no attention was paid to our beachfront resulting in vandalising of facilities and totally overgrown and derelict ‘lawns’, or rather weeds, all along the beachfront.

With the relaxation of The State of Emergency to level 2 resulting in the opening of both inter-provincial travel and our beaches, it meant that not only would the residents have to contend with this mess but out of town visitors would not be able to enjoy the lawns and facilities and as such I felt that something had to be done. My big fear is that, as a City, we will be trashed on Social Media, convincing people not to visit us and thereby destroying our already crippled tourism businesses.

I put out an appeal on the Summerstrand Chat Group initially to the the Tourism Sector in Summerstrand, namely B&B’s and Guesthouses and secondly to the residents, to contribute to a fund that would be used to mow the grass as a private, resident, initiative. Ian Bezuidenhout the owner of ‘Lazy Cutters’ garden service came on board and agreed to cut at his absolute cost, giving us his time and use of machines for free, enabling us to cover maximum area on the funds we collect.

To date we have collected R5500, which at a cost of R1000 per day gives us pretty much 6 full days of cutting and I estimate this will take us from Shark Rock Pier to past Protea Marine and maybe even as far as Something Good. As ‘Lazy Cutters’ are committed to their normal customers during the week, they can only cut on weekends so it will take us the better part of September to get all the way to the Beacon, provided we can continue to get donations to the cause. The end of this weekend, weekend one, should see us getting to somewhere around 5th / 6th avenue.

Hopefully by end September the Metro will have appointed new contractors and they will be able to maintain the lawns in future as they have done in the past because we cannot expect residents to do this on an ongoing basis. ‘Tourism’ is the Metro’s single biggest employer and its income to the city filters down through all levels of business, not only to those directly involved face to face with tourists, and The Metro needs to recognise this and look after its tourist facilities and drawcards.

Regards

Clifford Hanks

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Port Elizabethan

This author is a 'catch-all' for occasional articles and letters written to MyPE. The Author of each article can be found in the signature at the bottom of each individual article.