One of the South Point buildings in Braamfontein. Photo: Sinikiwe Mqadi
Students are complaining about dirty accommodation in a South Point buildings despite advertisements promising daily cleaning services.
According to the advertisements, all student accommodation common areas are supposed to be cleaned daily, but Clifton Heights is cleaned only once a week due to a lack of staff.“It is not possible to clean all communes every day at Clifton because we do not have enough cleaners.” said South Point facilities, manager Jan Botha.
Second-year social work student, Thabo Mokoena and other students have complained that their commune houses are not cleaned but said there was no response.
“I ended up writing in their maintenance book that they should not come to my room at all, because I can do better,” said Mokoena.
Students also said that they chose to stay at South Point because they saw on the advertisements that it is a convenient place for students and would be clean.
“I came to this place because I thought they clean for us every day. We are students—we do not have time,” said microbiology honours student, Keneilwe Ranakabae.
Clifton Heights has five cleaners to service 126 communes. Cleaning services are outsourced to the Tsepo Cleaning Company. Common areas include kitchens, bathrooms, television room and verandas.
According to the Consumer Protection Act: “Consumers have a right to fair and responsible marketing. Suppliers are not permitted to mislead consumers in respect of pricing, the nature, properties, advantages or uses of goods or services advertised, if such goods are not actually available for purchase or procurement in accordance with these standards.”
