On the 17th February 2012 Hephzibah Women’s Wellness Organisation was invited to attend the Awareness campaign for Teenage Pregnancy and HIV/AIDS at the Eldorado Park Secondary School in Eldorado Park.  Learners from a  selection of secondary schools such as Kliptown, Eldomain , Klipspruit, Missouri , Silver Oaks attended and performed  exceptionally well at the event. Team Hephzibah was right on top of the game with the Teenage Pregnancy and Abortion presentation to the learners. The program was desired to raise awareness on teenage pregnancy and abortion. It was a positive and vey interactive session with the Y-age generation. The outcomes were overwhelming in a good influential state of young minds and the learners grasped food for thought, body and spirit.

Team Hephzibah received more invitations requests from other various schools and we’re looking forward to coming and providing the service. We’d like to thank Eldorado Park Secondary school for inviting us and providing us with the stage to serve the youth, this is helping our Organisation to achieve it’s mission and in return a touch of humanity is by bit restored.

Lee Tsomo

Freelance Journalist

The municipality’s Drop rating was raised by two drops from four in last year’s rating to six assuring our communities of the cleanest drinking water in the country. According to Department of Water Affairs, Steve Tshwete performed exceptionally well during the 2011 Blue Drop assesment and is still on the lead in 2012, rating its Blue Drop  certification status within its various supply systems.

Management and the technical teams are to beapplauded for their continued commitment.

Notwithstanding, the Steve Tshwete Municipality still has room to improve drinking water quality managementpractices. Process control was identified  as an area that needs to addressed.

With a mandate to provide drinking water of a high quality nto its residents and consumers and to monitor the quality water, the municipality is both a water service  provider and a water service authority.

Withing the Steve Tshwete Municipality there are 12 water supply systemsand four waste water treatment facilities which serve an estimated population of 180 000, of which 160 000 have direct access to water. The water supply system are at Vaal-bank/Krugerdam, Presidentrus, Hendrina, Doornkop 1 and 2 village, Bankfontein, Kranspoort Vakansiedorp, Aventura Loskop, Komati, Pullenshope, Rietkuil and Middelburg Mines.

The waste water treatment are located in Middelburg, Kwazamokuhle, Komati and Nlinkpan. Water is supplied to Middelburg, Mhluzi, Hendrina, Kwazamokuhle, Presidentsrus, Doornkop, Somaphepha and Mfube village.

The Blue Drop award system gets its name from rain drops that symbolise new life in a landscape afflicted by drought, bringing ‘hope and heralds the beggining of an abundant harvest’.

Greater Middelburg FM 89.7

The City of Matlosana in the North West province has been running a very successful campaign called the Environmental cleaning campaign were the council has been going around Klerksdorp and other surrounding areas cleaning dumping sites mostly in townships. In one area there are more than three dumping sites where people are constantly dumping waste illegally around houses near by, This has caused bad smells, rats and rodents for those who are nearer to the sites.

Its amazing how people choose to throw garbage anywhere they fill fits for them instead of waiting just seven day s for a municipal truck to do its weekly round of collecting. It could be the poor sociality that we will live in where you still find people saying that they can’t afford refuse bags. This very excuse has been very difficult for the councilors as before this the green big bin was given to house holds everywhere in the last few years to save communities the expense of buying refuse bags.

When the bins where introduced to the very community these bins were stolen and soled else where so it was back to square one again. Building scrap was being dumped at these area, however there has been a slight improvement since the beginning of the campaign and once again we plead with communities about dumping sites and their contribution to climate change.

Schools and churches will form part of this campaign as of next year so that kids are also taught about keeping the environment clean at all times.

Khethiwe Ramahali Reporting from Star Fm 102.9 Klerksdorp

This year is almost coming to an end, and today marking exactly 29 days after the opening of COP 17 on the 28/11/2011. Coming back from the ICC to the North West Province brought very little difference, not a lot of people from Durban well accept those regularly going into the ICC like delegates and journalists, knew much about COP 17 and climate Change in general. It is still very clear that ordinary people like you and me are not doing much harm to the earth as oppose to the bigger companies across the world.

Those living in impoverished areas still have very little information about global warming and global cooling, the little damage caused by burning coal and pollution will still have a bad reaction to the earth. People in shacks still do not know what solar power is and how it works, in order to start living in a 0% carbon world we need to start helping those who need help the most.

We are yet still hoping that South Africa together with the African continent as a whole will start implementing the great ideas that were presented during Africa Day at the ICC in Durban.

Khethiwe Ramahali reporting for Star Fm

Klerksdorp  

 This followed after the police set a roadblock on union road.  A tip off  by annonymas commuter that there were drugs and illegal fire arms at the residential place at the devland dumping site.
It is understood the police responded to the tip off and arrested the drug lord, however the drug lord’s right hand men shot the police in defence while trying to escape. The police spokesperson General Nkuna said four people were shot including the police officer and one of the injured  is in a critical condition. According to General Nkuna, the alleged perpetrators are Lesotho Foreign nationals.
General Nkuna added that there are allegations against the police but the fact of the matter is that  drugs were confiscated. This brings everything down to WHY are dumping sites situated in locations and amongs community residential areas? What is the government doing about this hence these trash sites end up being Drug Lords palace of operations as they are a perfect disguise operational facilities. This is a violation of human rights to leave in a healthy enviroment. Dumping sites do not only depricite property value, they polute air and poison the soil and results in health hazards such as lung related deseases like bronchitis, athsma, short breaths, headaches etc. Mara trash like that has been protested by the commuters and petitions has been signed off, maar hoe kom they haven’t been moved. Obviousley the longer they are there and they don’t budge parasites nje nge drug lords see a place of business. Lets start from WHO permitted dumping sites to be situated near residential areas.

They started as garden sites and were primarily established in the early 70’s by the old Johannesburg Town Council. In essence, the old cleansing department never included garden refuse in the domestic refuse that was collected once a week from the household. These facilities were thus created as a service to residents to facilitate a dumping area for the disposal of light garden waste. People often refer to these sites as a dumping ground, but the reason why they are defined as refuse transfer sites is clearly evident in the fact that refuse is disposed of into containers and transferred to a disposal site or a composting site.

In later years however, various other councils were forced by urban development to also establish these sites. The collection of domestic refuse is based on set routes and established volumes being removed from these areas every day. Councils who originally permitted garden refuse to be put out (Kempton Park) with the normal domestic refuse were faced with the predicament in peak summer periods, of having to remove additional bags of refuse. In some cases it has been recorded that residents had put out 92 bags of garden refuse. The additional volumes of refuse put out had a significant effect on the allocated rounds not being completed in a day and thus the need to establish garden refuse transfer sites was borne. And so as the crime parasites such as drug lords. This does not only feed them but it also motivates hobbo’s not to seek for proper shelter and thus the purpose of NGO’s falls invain. It has become a place for business and a homes for the homeless. By these sites you find plastic homes, children, women both old and young even pregnant. One finds families but where are the city councillors seeing that the TRASH is no longer Bin controlled?…and the main purpose has fallen off the wagon even though various sites have extended their services to providing containers or receptacles for the deposit of reclaimable products, like paper, plastic and cans. Land fill space is fast depleting and is impacting the environment negatively at an alarming pace mostly because of the rapid population growth in the City and that, in turn, links directly to excessive waste production.

Mpungose, Pikitup’s Executive: Legal Environment, Compliance and Safety, was addressed the annual EnvirCon conference earlier last month at Villa Paradiso at Hartebeespoort. The conference is targeted at environmental managers and specialists from large organisations around SA and aims to present solutions and opportunities to the environmental issues which the country faces.

According to reports the City of Joburg’s population is growing at a rate of 9% annually. They simply do not have the space to accomodate the continuously increasing levels of waste being generated as more people move into the city. More than a space issue, the local environment cannot withstand the sustained impact. As the City’s constituionally mandated solid waste management company, Pikitup needs to find a meaningful and sustainable way of reducing the levels of waste generated and that need to be managed and ultimately disposed of at landfill .

Looking at what constitutes waste, how it is generated and ultimately managed, Pikitup’s plan, moving forward, is to drastically cut down on waste produced in order to then reduce what needs to be disposed of down the line. Pikitup is looking at reducing the waste that is produced by residents, businesses and individuals, so that we have less to dispose of at landfills”. This is in line with the national waste management strategy which cabinet has approved . The strategy reveals trends on minimising waste and therefore reducing the negative impacts on the environment. The ultimate objective is to change Pikitup’s current value chain from ‘collect, transport and dispose’ to ‘rethink, reduce, reuse, recycle’. “Even though they encourage people to reduce waste creation, people must accept that realistically there will always be some level of waste

It is the job of Pikitup to make sure that refuse is collected, diverted and recycled where possible, and the residual ultimately being disposed.Critical to this process is changing the public’s mindset and attitude towards the creation and management of waste.

Pikitup is looking to divert at least 33% of waste from landfills through a combination of product stewardship (take-back) programmes where manufacturers take back their own packaging and other recyclable products, the development of facilities which promote re-use, recycling and composting, – these initiatives will, in turn, increase CoJ residents’ participation in recycling, support the roll out of infrastructure for waste diversion, such as Materials Recovery Facilities, Composting Plants, Waste Transfer stations and builder’s rubble plants and finally through extensive city-wide education and awareness outreach programmes.

With COP 17  that took place in Durban, South Africa and its response to climate change will come under the spotlight. It is in this respect that CoJ, together with Pikitup, are committed to transitioning to a low-carbon economy.

Pikitup has already embarked on a number of initiatives which contribute towards CoJ’s goal of emitting less carbon emmissions. They presently run the Clean City Campaign, the highlight of which is the annual Clean-up Day. It also incorporates the Illegal Dumping Programme, which is about combatting the problem of illicitly discarding waste in any open space around the city. Next year 2012, they will expand the Separation at Source initiative to include more suburbs, which will feature an education drive to get more households to separate their refuse from home to help minimise what ends up at the landfill site. Hope the next Separation at Source initiative will include more rural and residential e loxion, so that we don’t have crime parasites like the drug lords using dumping sites as business operation facilities.

By: Lee Tsomo (Eldo’s FM 87.6)

Contractors working to erect a cellphone tower

Teachers and parents are fumming with anger at the Eldorado Park Senior Secondary school also known as Die Blou Skool as Cell C Contractors  erected disputed cellphone masts on the school premises. Scientists and doctors have conducted studies that indicates  a health concern must not be ignored to those who live within a close raidor of a cell phone tower. Some of the health risks are terminal deseases such as the increased risk to acquire cancer by three times more on a scale. This is the case of the Gauteng based community in Eldorado Park let alone neighbouring Soweto zones.

What was found is the proportion of newly developed cancer cases was three times higher among those who had lived during the past ten years at a distance of up to 400m (about 1300 feet) from the cellular transmitter site, compared to those living further away. They also revealed that the patients fell ill on average 8 years earlier.

Looking at only the first 5 years, there was no significant increased risk of getting cancer in the inner area. However, for the period 1999 to 2004, the odds ratio for getting cancer was 3.38 in the inner area compared to the outer area. Breast cancer topped the list, with an average age of 50.8 year compared with 69.9 years in the outer area, but cancers of the prostate, pancreas, bowel, skin melanoma, lung and blood cancer were all increased.

The results were startling. Out of the 622 exposed patients, 8 cases of different kinds of cancer were diagnosed in a period of just one year (July 1997 to June 1998): 3 cases of breast cancer, one of ovarian cancer, lung cancer, Hodgkin’s disease (cancer of the lymphatic system), osteoid osteoma (bone tumour) and kidney cancer. This compares with 2 per 1 222 in the matched controls of the nearby clinic. The relative risk of cancer was 4.15 for those living near the cell-phone transmitter compared with the entire population of Israel.

Women are  more susceptible. As seven out of eight cancer cases were women, the relative cancer rates for females were 10.5 for those living near the transmitter station. One year after the close of the study, 8 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in the microwave exposed area and two in the control area.

DEFINITION: Towers are tall structures where antennas are installed. A typical tower may easily hold over 10 antennas for various companies. Antennas, on the other hand, are the actual emitters of signals for various radio services including cellular, paging and others. Antennas are placed on high towers or can be installed by themselves (stand alone) on top of buildings and other structures.

What to Do If You Live Near a Cell Phone Transmitter

Short of relocating, there are some things you can do to fight the effects of electromagnetic radiation (EMR). Here are our suggestions based on these guidelines:

The primary means of intervention is through avoidance or minimizing exposure. This simply means to avoid contact with EMR as much as possible. In case of a cell phone tower close to your home, this could mean using specially formulated RF shield paint, shielding fabric, shielding glass or film for windows, etc. Although they may sound extreme, these measures are a life-saver for someone who suffers from electrosensitivity, a condition in which a person experiences physical symptoms aggravated by electromagnetic fields. (Sweden is the only country so far that recognizes electrosensitivity as a real medical condition, and their government pays for measures to reduce exposure in their homes and workplaces).

Other means of intervention is to help reverse damage caused by exposure.This includes nutritional support such as anti-oxidant supplementation, particularly helpful in countering the effects of free radicals. Supplementing with anti-oxidants SOD, catalase, glutathione, and Coq10 are especially recommended. Microwave radiation has been shown to decrease levels of these anti-oxidants that the body normally produces to protect itself. These levels are sensitive indicators in stress, aging, infections and various other disease states.

By: Lee Tsomo (Eldos FM 87.6)

Picture and audio by: Jayd Smith (Eldos FM87.6)

Seems like our leaders didn’t really listen to the people instead of the corporations as December 2nd march was demanding.

The developed world had already accepted formal targets under a first phase of the Kyoto Protocol, which runs out at the end of next year, although the United States had never ratified its commitment. After days of emotional debate, the chairwoman of the United Nations climate talks urged delegates to approve four packages, which have legal force.

“We came here with plan A, and we have concluded this meeting with plan A to save one planet for the future of our children and our grandchildren to come,” South African Foreign Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane said. “We have made history,” she said, bringing the hammer down on more than two weeks of sometimes fractious talks in the South African port of Durban, the longest in two decades of U.N. climate talks.

The Durban talks had been due to wrap up on Friday, but dragged into a second extra day on Sunday because of disputes over how to phrase the legal commitment. Approval came after two and a half days of round-the-clock wrangling among 194 nations. Even by UNFCCC standards, the meeting broke the record for going into overtime.

The talks should have ended on Friday but wrapped up in the dawn light of Sunday amid scenes of exhaustion and shredded nerves. UNFCCC chief Christiana Figueres was exultant.

Gugu Madonsela, Inanda 88.4fm, KZn, Durban

• A Standing Committee is to keep an overview of climate finance in the context of the UNFCCC and to assist the Conference of the Parties. It will comprise 20 members, represented equally between the developed and developing world.

• A focussed work programme on long-term finance was agreed, which will contribute to the scaling up of climate change finance going forward and will analyse options for the mobilisation of resources from a variety of sources.

Adaptation

 • The Adaptation Committee, composed of 16 members, will report to the COP on its efforts to improve the coordination of adaptation actions at a global scale.

• The adaptive capacities above all of the poorest and most vulnerable countries are to be strengthened. National Adaptation Plans will allow developing countries to assess and reduce their vulnerability to climate change.

• The most vulnerable are to receive better protection against loss and damage caused by extreme weather events related to climate change. Technology • The Technology Mechanism will become fully operational in 2012.

• The full terms of reference for the operational arm of the Mechanism – the Climate Technology Centre and Network – are agreed, along with a clear procedure to select the host. The UNFCCC secretariat will issue a call for proposals for hosts on 16 January 2012. Support of developing country action

 • Governments agreed a registry to record developing country mitigation actions that seek financial support and to match these with support. The registry will be a flexible, dynamic, web-based platform. Other key decisions

• A forum and work programme on unintended consequences of climate change actions and policies were established.

• Under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, governments adopted procedures to allow carbon-capture and storage projects. These guidelines will be reviewed every five years to ensure environmental integrity.

• Governments agreed to develop a new market-based mechanism to assist developed countries in meeting part of their targets or commitments under the Convention.

Details of this will be taken forward in 2012.

Compiled by ; Gugu Madonsela, Inanda 88.4fm, KZN, Durban