Refuse in parts of Tshwane havn't been collected since Thursday. Picture - Citizen Stock.
The City of Tshwane has advised residents that it is suspending waste collections in the Bronkhorstspruit area following community protests on Monday morning.
“Due to community protests all City of Tshwane waste collection operations in the greater Bronkhorstspruit will be suspended, as access to the landfill site has been blocked,” said the city’s MMC for Environment and Agriculture Management Katlego Mathebe in a statement.
Problems with refuse removal began on Thursday afternoon when waste services staff decided to embark on a wild cat strike, affecting Friday’s removal services.
“Employees of waste contractors were demanding that the City employ them directly,” explained Tshwane mayoral spokesperson Sipho Stuurman.
“They did not show up for work on Friday so that they could march on Tshwane House and hand a memorandum of demands to the Executive Mayor,” said Stuurman.
MMC Mathebe received the memorandum on behalf of the mayor.
Mathebe said the City had to put catch up plans in place, ensuring that rubbish would be collected after the strike.
“The City requests all its customers to leave their bins outside until they are lifted,” said Mathebe at the time.
But there’s been more trouble brewing since Friday’s waste collectors’ wild cat strike.
Frustrated Bronkhurspruit residents have now embarked on what appears to be service delivery-related protests in the area.
“Monday’s interruption in Bronkhorstspruit is not related to Friday’s strike at all. There are service delivery protests in the community of Rethabiseng, which affected access to the landfill site,” explained Stuurman.
“The City decided to suspend waste collection services in order to protect infrastructure and safeguard personnel,” he added.
The City assured residents that it had contingency plans in both instances to run catch-up operations concurrently with normal daily operations once the situation normalised.
But residents will also have to make sure that they are using ‘municipal-approved bins’ if they want their refuse collected.
It is understood that some residents’ trash was not collected due to their non-compliant bins.
“In terms of the municipal-approved bins, the City has determined that there are many residents who use non-approved bins. Clause 6(6) of the 2016 Waste Management By-Law states that the municipality will only collect waste in approved waste containers,” explained Stuurman
“We received numerous complaints about the non-collection of bins, only to find that the complainants were not using City-approved bins,” said Stuurman.
The city has asked residents to get municipal-approved bins because it wants to prevent illegal dumping
“It prompted us to encourage residents to apply for and receive approved bins so that their waste could be collected,” Stuurman concluded.
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