Joburg’s Delta Park faces decline in maintenance

Brian Compton writes: Many members of the public have often diligently taken out water hyacinth from the dams in Delta Park, removed alien vegetation and generally, within their ability, worked tirelessly to maintain the park for the benefit of all its users. The help we get from City Parks is practically zilch and probably why one of the finest parks in Joburg is falling into rack and ruin very quickly.

Let me give you an example. The last time the grass in the whole of the park was properly mowed was at the end of September last year.

Bits and pieces were haphazardly mowed since then only because of an uproar about the grass being waist high in many places. This has resulted in the infiltration of vagrants.

In March, City Parks mowed half of the park in a very poor manner and some of the areas are now not only waist high in grass, but are covered with black jacks and other alien vegetation.

We are told that it has not been mowed because of the flowering of Cosmos. I agree, those areas where the Cosmos are beautifully growing should not be cut, but pathways should be mowed for the enjoyment of its users.

The areas by the excellent Environmental Centre and lower dams, which is used by schools from all over Gauteng to learn about nature, have not been cut at all since September last year and this is where the black jacks are now most prevalent.

In fact, the only area that can be said to be in reasonable condition is the area below this centre where the swings are, but this has been the worst I have seen since the erection of these lovely swings.

I have been to the City Parks offices at Marks Park three times since September 2016 and am greeted with the excuse that they are understaffed, the tractors are burnt out and no one in top management will listen to them and their ideas on how to manage the parks.

They asked me had I been to Zoo Lake, to which I replied that this park was in a beautiful condition, in fact, it is in the best condition that I have seen it for many years. They said this was because they had direct control in the management of this park.

Management have done away with employing their own people and are outsourcing the work to incompetent service providers, whose work is never inspected and who, no doubt, get a lot of money at the expense of the taxpayer for shoddy workmanship.

Joburg City Parks and Zoo (JCPZ) replied: Delta Park is considered a flagship facility and, therefore, a team is deployed at least every seven days to conduct horticultural maintenance in areas not utilised to retain Joburg’s rich biodiversity. There are also dedicated teams that manage litter picking and the ecopockets found in Delta Park are managed on a 60-day cycle.

The eradication of invasive plants are generally undertaken during dry weather conditions when teams can access low lying areas. JCPZ is committed to eradicating invasive plants in parts of the city, subject to partnership programmes and/ or the availability of resources.

This is being supported with a wide scale environmental campaign as well, to educate residents on identifying these threats; the impact of these plants and to remove invasive plants where evident.

We would like to commend the many resident associations who are actively working to remove alien invasive plants in the City of Joburg.