They’ve been hard at work for months, disinfecting the public spaces of the CBD to help fight the spread of Covid-19. Meet the CCID’s Sanitising Squad.
If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, and it don’t look too good, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters! Or should we say, the CCID’s Sanitising Squad made up of Wylan Scholtz, Blake Bester, Lucky Mangezi and Peter Kaira.
Akin to the “ghostbusters” in the Hollywood movie, but responsible for a real and serious mission, the CCID’s four-man team walks across town daily tasked with deep-cleaning all high-touch surfaces. From pedestrian buttons to railings, benches, bollard tops, the top part of electrical boxes, and lids of green street-pole refuse bins, they clean them all.
Since they first appeared in July, clad in signature green overalls and armed with pressure-sprayer backpacks and squirt bottles, they have used about 1 000 litres of 70 % + alcohol-based sanitiser.
That’s equivalent to about 4 226 cups of water. The amount is less surprising when you consider that the cleaning takes place from 08h00 till 17h00.
The sanitising squad falls under the CCID’s Urban Management department , whose job is to keep the CBD clean and reduce health and safety risks, especially now with Covid-19 in the mix. When there’s inclement weather, the squad joins Urban Management’s other teams to gain additional skills in keeping the CBD pristine.
The great news is that the team will be around sanitising the CBD until December following the “positive energy” from the public, says CCID CEO Tasso Evangelinos. Thereafter, the project will be evaluated.
Evangelinos is confident “it has the legs to carry on”. He adds that these innovative measures prove that the Cape Town CBD is open for business. “We believe they will go a long way in restoring the confidence of businesses, residents, visitors and people who work in the CBD.”
IMAGES: CCID
Note: The article appeared in the spring edition of City Views.