HOD placed on leave to let task team sort out waste debacle
The team has already met with the service providers who had pulled out their resources and the engagement has yielded some positive results.
The Ekurhuleni mayor Tania Campbell has formed a task team to help turn around things in the solid waste department.
The head of the department for environmental resources and waste management, Faith Wotshela, has in the meantime been placed on administrative leave while the task team does its work to revive the department and investigate the causes of the collapse.
According to the mayoral spokesperson, Warren Gwilt, the team has been given a two-fold mandate.
First mandate is to get the waste collection back on track with immediate effect and to give daily progress reports to the mayor for her to assess where the bottlenecks are and how they are going to be cleared.
The second mandate is to investigate what has gone wrong in the department and what has led to this collapse.
“After nearly a three-week executive leadership vacuum, solid waste collection in the city has come to a complete standstill.
“As a result, waste has been piling up across the city. Our streets are adorned with filth and residents have found themselves living in inhumane conditions.
“To resolve this with the urgency that it deserves, I have established a solid waste task team to look into the issue. I committed to residents that we will get the basics right and provide tangible outcomes,” said Campbell in a statement.
In the wake of this announcement, the CoE has already moved swiftly to restore waste removal services in various areas affected in the past couple of weeks.
These areas include Langaville, Wattville, Daveyton-Etwatwa, Duduza, Kwa-Thema, Tembisa One and Two, Norkem Park, Thokoza and Palmridge, all affected due to an unforeseen glitch which led to service providers not being paid and thus suspending their services.
After an engagement with the city’s waste management turnaround task team early this morning, service providers agreed to hit the ground running with immediate effect.
“Waste removal teams are already working around the clock to ensure that all the backlog generated recently is cleared by the weekend so that the service follows the normal collection schedule from next week,” said metro spokesman Zweli Dlamini.
“We have addressed issues with the service providers who had pulled out their resources and work has resumed in earnest to collect waste in the affected areas.”
He added that special attention will also be paid to clear backlogs at the local public off-loading facilities, which are now overflowing due to the disruption of the service.
“The city once again apologises for the inconvenience caused in the past couple of weeks and can assure residents that we are committed to avoiding similar discrepancies in future. The city further thanks residents for their patience during these difficult days.
“We can assure residents that we remain committed to our mandate of providing quality waste management services to all our residents to ensure an acceptable level of cleanliness is achieved in our city.”
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