By Jonews reporter
CLEANING up the streets of Hillbrow after the New Year's eve mayhem will cost the city's cleaning utility, Pikitup, about R100 000 -- and require two days work.
Every year, Hillbrow is the centre for the most raucus New Year celebrations, and although this year was quieter than most - thanks to a massive presence by 270 members of the police, Metro Police and army - the mess left behind was still astonishing.
On Thursday morning, parts of lower Hillbrow and neighbouring Berea still resembled war zones, with smashed bottles and bricks, overturned foodstalls and household bric-a-brac scattered across pavements and streets.
Pikitup put 200 staff on cleaning duty in Hillbrow at 6.00am on Wednesday, just a few hours after the last revellers quietened down. By Thursday morning they had cleaned most of the area, but were not expected to finish the job until the afternoon. The areas around the main residential streets of Claim, Quartz and Smit were in the worst condition.
Metro Police reported that two people were seriously injured, and another 44 less seriously, in a shower of objects rained down from high-rises - which included beds, television sets and buckets, glass bottles and rocks. Revellers even stoned police armoured vehicles, and fired gunshots into the air. But with no deaths and relatively few incidents of drunken driving, police considered this a success ... by Hillbrow standards, anyway.
