DA councillor Graham Gersbach is at his wits end over the metro’s refusal to even acknowledge, let alone fix, the refuse removal problem plaguing some Germiston residents.
Gersbach has warned of impending chaos – and streets littered with refuse bags – if residents aren’t urgently informed of the new collection days for their respective suburbs.
In December 2012, the metro decided to reallocate the Germiston suburbs to the north of the R24 to the Edenvale Solid Waste Removal depot, and some of the suburbs to the south of the R24 to the Bedfordview depot.
This was done despite neither of these depots having the capability of servicing the additional suburbs.
During the course of 2013 it was clear the metro had made a mistake and the Germiston suburbs were moved back to the Germiston depot, which used the same calendar dates as the ones previously provided to residents by the Edenvale and Bedfordview solid waste depots.
This year, however, presents a new problem, in that the depots all use a different system in order to collect rubbish.
Both Edenvale and Bedfordview calendars run from January to December, where Germiston’s calendar runs from February to March the following year.
This means that, currently, suburbs such as Meadowbrook, Dawnview, Fishers’ Hill, Solheim, Symhurst, Primrose, Sunnyrock, Sunnyridge, Wannenburghoogte, Gerdview, Homestead, Rustivia, Activia Park, Henville, Harmelia Extension One, Meadowdale and its extensions, Buurendal, Highway Gardens, Harmelia and Harmelia Extensions Two, Three and Four, which were moved from one calendar to another, do not currently appear on any refuse collection lists.
To add to the problem, Edenvale and Bedfordview depots are on a fixed day collection schedule, which includes public holidays, while Germiston is not yet on a fixed day schedule.
While it hasn’t been officially communicated to councillors, Gersbach has discovered, from his attempts to find collection dates for affected residents, that there will be a fixed date system from the end of February for all depots across the metro.
He said that while the new fixed day system would make rubbish collection simpler from the end of February, it did not solve the immediate problem of informing residents of the days on which their refuse would be collected for the next eight weeks.
The DA believes that it is a fairly simple matter to upload the dates onto the metro’s website and publish them in the local newspaper, instead of treating refuse collection dates as clandestine operations.
