The urgent bid by a group of waste pickers who were allegedly thrown off a property in Eldoraigne last month has been struck from the roll due to a technical point.

A Pretoria News report says the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) found that the group – assisted by Lawyers for Human Rights – did not serve the application on MKS Protection Services, cited as one of the respondents.

The lawyers, however, said this was because they could not get hold of the security company.

The group of about 55 waste pickers wanted to return to the land from where they run their trade. They also wanted an interdict to prevent the land owners and the security company from intimidating and harassing them.

In a first of its sort, the group asked that the property owners pay each of them R3  000 in constitutional damages due to the ‘trampling’ of their constitutional rights.

The group said they were chased off the land on which they had been living undisturbed for four years.

The waste pickers said the owners of the property, Eugene Clark and the Daveyton Shopping Centre, had promised they could remain on a portion of the land.

However, Clark said the property was cleaned last year on the insistence of the City of Tshwane and at that time, it was empty.

He said he noticed this year that some people had dumped vast amounts of plastic waste on the property, which was against the by-laws.

He said interference by outsiders who ‘instigated’ the waste pickers not to move their goods, later escalated into violence and resulted in three security vehicles being set alight.

Clark denied that the waste pickers ever settled on the land and said they only used it as a dumping ground.

The Pretoria News report says Lawyers for Human Rights, meanwhile, is set on returning to court to fight for the waste pickers right to return and receive compensation.

Full Pretoria News report