Tshwane councillors urged to deal with backlog as waste collection resumes

The City of Tshwane has urged its local councils to implement correct waste collection management strategies as the service delivery resumed in the metropolitan area.

This comes in light of the waste collectors’ strike in recent weeks which resulted in rubbish bins overflowing in some parts of Pretoria.

While speaking at the 2020 waste management briefing, minister of environment, forestry and fisheries minister Barbara Creecy highlighted that non-compliance within the metropolitan municipality needed to be addressed and solved to ensure that services were delivered.

“This needs to be addressed with a collective effort to bring the necessary change and we must call out poor performance and non-compliance, and ensure that corrective action is taken where needed,” she said.

The minister emphasised that support was needed in waste collection management as much as non-compliance needed to be rooted-out in local government.

“More needs to be done to support municipalities to comply with landfill infrastructure standards, improve the number of households that have a weekly waste collection and actively promote waste diversion from landfills.

“We have seen sterling collaboration between the department, national treasury and local government department.”

The City of Tshwane’s renewal of the yellow service delivery fleet contract was hit by the strike among other municipalities.

The metro had previously argued that it was still working on clearing the waste collection backlog throughout its area following weeks of non-collection.

This prompted the metro to acquire a fleet of 439 specialised vehicles to enhance service delivery to residents.

According to Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba, some of the acquired vehicles, including light commercial vehicles, were set to be used by other departments such as roads, electricity, water and sanitation.

The other vehicles will be used for waste collection, patrol at landfill sites and transportation of employees to various sites.

“These fleet management vehicles have state-of-the-art equipment and the latest professional tools on the market. The new vehicles are part of the city of Tshwane’s strategic fleet management division replacement programme,” he concluded.

Tshwane also acquired bulletproof armoured emergency service vehicles, which was a first of its kind for the area or even South Africa last month.

In separate news, the Constitutional Court reserved the judgment in the matter of the dissolution of the City Tshwane council after an eight-hour-long hearing that took place last Thursday, 10 September, Rekord reported.

The City had been placed under administration in March after cooperative governance MEC Lebogang Maile dissolved the Democratic Alliance-led Tshwane council.

This article first appeared on Rekord and was republished with permission.

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