Ekurhuleni Mayor Tania Campbell established a solid waste task team on November 8.

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This follows her re-election into the mayoral office.

According to the mayoral spokesperson, Warren Gwilt, the solid waste task team has a twofold mandate.

“The first is to get the waste collection back on track. The mayor now receives daily progress reports from the task team to assess where the bottlenecks are and how they are being cleared.

“The second is to investigate what has gone wrong in the department and has led to this collapse,” said Gwilt.

Independent Ratepayers Association (Irasa) said budget allocations and execution of budgets were the overlying issues when it came to waste removal.

“Under Campbell, the waste department spent R20m on overtime, yet the towns still look like dumping sites.

“She and her administration charged businesses for litter picking which has not happened since she took office.

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“Residents have yet to have regular waste collection since July,” said Irasa’s Ald Izak Berg.

Spokesperson of the CoE, Zweli Dlamini, said areas were affected due to “an unforeseen glitch”, which led to service providers not being paid and thus suspending their services.

Gwilt said the head of the department for Environmental Resources and Waste Management, Faith Wotshela, was placed on administrative leave while the task team does its work to investigate the department.

“We have addressed issues with the service providers who had pulled out their resources and work has resumed collecting waste in the affected areas,” said Dlamini.

He said backlogs will be cleared at the local public off-loading facilities, which are now overflowing due to the disruption of the service.