The Maitland CID team would like to urge business owners not to give recycled material to homeless people and in the same light, also help to discourage members of the public to give money to beggars. “In both cases, this humble gesture causes more harm than good”, says Gene Lorentz, manager of Geocentric Urban Management.

Gene says that by giving money to people begging, in whatever form, causes them to stay on the street without trying to find jobs and create better lives for themselves. It is easy to collect money or material which they can recycle for money and live of that for a day. The next day they do the same. It is just not sustainable.

He is a great supporter of the Give Responsible campaign, an initiative of the Central City Improvement District [CCID] and the City of Cape Town. The campaign urges the public to rather give their money or donations to NGOs such as shelters of halfway houses that are helping provide people living on the streets with warm beds, hot meals, family reunification services, trauma therapy and the necessary life skills to help them built a new life for themselves. For more information on the Give Responsible Campaign, go to www.giveresponsibly.co.za [](http://www.giveresponsibly.co.za)

Dumping in the Maitland CID remains a big challenge. Two favourite dumping sites that the Maitland CID team has to clear regularly are the corner of Coronation and Melon streets, as well as no. 5 Glamis Close. Various household items are also regularly dumped in Essex and Suffolk streets, although it seems to become less frequent.

Gene Lorentz, CEO of Geocentric urban management, urges businesses not to dump their waste or place their cardboard boxes outside for the vagrants to collect. This adds to the bigger social problems in the area.

Two businesses in the Maitland CID area went up in flames in May causing major damages. The owners of Zanzibar café on the corner of Voortrekker and Kensington, was sleeping on the premises when they were alerted by people on the street that the place is on fire. They managed to escape, but he shop was totally gutted. The fire at Liquor Mait was extinguished by employees of the shop by using fire extinguishers.

The public safety team of the Maitland CID had on various occasions during the past few months, intercepted Metro property such as railway lines, sleeper bolts and clamps. Amongst these incidents, the public safety officers caught three people digging against the wall on Prasa’s premises next to the railway line trying to uproot Prasa communication cables [see photo].

Prasa also started to clean up all the dumping along the railway lines between Koeberg and Maitland stations, including the area under the Prestige bridge. Prasa had to make use of private contractors to remove the dumping material and waste.

The successful safety partnership between the Maitland CID public safety team, SAPS, Law Enforcement and Traffic Services resulted in R49 700 worth of fines that were issued at various day and night time roadblocks in the Maitland City Improvement District during the months of April and May this year.

During these roadblocks on 29 and 30 April, as well as on 8, 14 and 15 May altogether 205 vehicles were stopped and 67 fines were issues. A person was also arrested for the possession of Mandrax and a taxi driver for driving under the influence of alcohol. The Law Enforcement Liquor Compliance Unit investigated 8 premises and fines worth R5 200 were issued for unlicensed sales. A number of people were arrested for drug related charges at a night club in Voortrekker Road during a SAPS operation in the area.

Towards the end of January an increase in crime in the Maitlaid CID area were experienced. One of the big challenges is the Metro Rail security situation which saw more attempted break-ins form the area.

“The constant battle with stolen trolleys and wheelie bins continue every day and we hope that our zero-tolerance approach has a positive impact,” says Gene Lorentz, CEO of management company Geocentric. It is not uncommon to find all kinds of stolen property in these trolleys which ranges from car batteries, counterfeit goods, car parts to vehicle spares, copper wire and cables and metal.

Several arrests were made during this period including the confiscation of 90 City of Cape Town blue bags – a case that was handed over to the SAPS.

The operations of the Geocentric Urban Cleaning Team are progressing well. Litter picking and dealing with illegal dumping is a continuous challenge within the CID boundaries, but we can already see the benefits of our revised cleaning plan in which we attend to more aspects than merely litter picking, removing of graffiti and posters and general cleansing.

The infographic below gives a general overview of the first three months of 2015.

A huge part of the Maitland CID area is not designed for huge vehicles to travel here, yet on a daily basis you will find large vehicles trying to navigate the smaller streets and the turning circles resulting in broken sidewalks, run over electrical boxes, poles and traffic lights.

This One Way street sign on the corner of Coronation and Koeberg Service Road was recently knocked down by a truck and had to be re-instated. This generally would be done by the Council however sometimes the team from the CID has to jump in to repair urgent incidences which would have required a long wait from the City side due to lots of infrastructure work on their agenda as well.

Damage done by a large truck which reversed into one of the major power kiosks in Voortrekker Road

Large container trucks traveling from and to the harbour and delivering containers to Grindrod and the depots along Voortrekker Road towards Salt River are also creating a huge traffic blockage and congestion by using routes through-out the CID which was not designed for heavy traffic. One example of this is the daily congestion along Beach Road towards the Koeberg intersection.

A number of defunct railway lines of Metro / Prassa were stolen in January this year. Although outside the Maitland CID area, a surveillance operation was started on 18 February to deal with cases of stolen scrap and motor vehicles found in the area or by means of searching loaded stolen trolleys. The operation is ongoing.

From copper cables, scrap metal, electronic equipment, drugs to even melted aluminium found after the recent veld fires in Tokai were amongst things confiscated from suspected people in the Maitland CID area over the past three months. Here are some of the scrap metal found in bags being searched by the Maitland CID’s team of public safety officers