With the month-old Pikitup workers strike poised to continue indefinitely, Metro police have thrown their weight behind the Joburg City Council’s effort to get the streets clean again.
This as ongoing talks commence between the South African Municipal Workers’ Union and the council amid a cloud of threats to dismiss workers and threats from workers to private contractors ferrying mounds of decaying rubbish to dump sites and also to volunteers cleaning their neighbourhoods.
In Alex, Metro officers escorted several private contractors’ trucks as they transported the refuse to various dump sites on 1 April. The exercise is part of several contingency measures, including encouraging residents to help out and take the waste to landfill sites, and in some places, night collection of the rubbish by private contractors to minimise intimidation.
Metro police officers on escort duty in Alex said it seemed the exercise will continue until an agreement is reached. Metro police vehicles blocked off roads in Wynberg around Pan Africa Mall and the Alexandra Magistrates’ Court to enable the clean up.
In the process, pungent smell fanned by a breeze permeated the court, shops in the mall and food trucks along the streets. This, however, did not discourage people from going about their normal business.
A Metro police officer who requested anonymity said a small group of strikers had rioted earlier near the mall, presumably to discourage customers from entering it, and were dissipated when officers and contracted companies arrived.
The officer commended the residents who, he said, co-operated with the exercise and stated that the council promised to provide them with plastic bags for use on the weekends.
