Rumours of waste backlog disputed by City of Ekurhuleni

The City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) disputes claims that the city is stuck in another waste backlog despite facing challenges.

This comes after Ward 92 Clr Kade Guerreiro raised concerns about poor waste collection in his ward.

He told Germiston City News that Marlands mini dumpsite was not operating at its peak efficiency, which led to locals not having a location to dispose of waste.

In other instances, communities such as Highway Gardens, Marlands, and Harmelia have their waste not collected on time, or at all, for weeks.

“The skip bins at the Marlands site have not been emptied and the dumpsite was closed for a longer period in December than usual. There is no schedule for emptying the bins.

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“Harmelia had no waste collection and when this happens, homeowners are dumping illegally as they cannot find a place to dump, and they are fined.

“They are charged for the waste they bring to a private dumping plant. When I asked a city official about the functioning of waste sites, she told me residents should go to Boksburg,” said Guerreiro.

GCN visited the dumpsite with Guerreiro on February 17 and noticed 12 full skips.

Guerreiro then expressed worries about sanitation when the rubbish skips were not routinely emptied.

“The employees at the dumpsite don’t have power and they use portable toilets. Their toilets need to be emptied every week, but occasionally they are not. The dump site has an odour, flies and rats,” said Guerreiro.

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GCN has sent a request for comment to the CoE media team inquiring about the state of the dumpsite.

CoE spokesperson Zweli Dlamini said the city used plant hire services to increase capacity for its fleet and cover areas with shortages.

“The CoE is not facing waste backlogs as it has backup services from the plant hire services, which can close the gap.

“At certain stages, the city faced closure of landfill sites servicing the site of the Marlands area.

“This resulted in the city falling behind the routine schedule whereby, things such as the non-availability of landfill sites to dump daily collection caused trucks to spend a lot of time waiting to dump. That forced the city to run behind normal schedule,” said Dlamini.

He added that CoE owns the Marlands Dumpsite and maintenance of the site is managed by an appointed service provider.

“The service provider is responsible for emptying the bins and also responsible for cleaning the site daily. The site operates seven days a week. Lack of power at the dump site is mostly due to cable theft,” said Dlamini.

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“The site is maintained and cleaned with refuse removed regularly.”

When questioned about the city’s fleet of trucks he said trucks are functioning at full capacity.

“Procuring of trucks is done based on the target of 100% capacity availability of trucks in each depot. Each depot works on a certain number of trucks, which makes them accomplish daily coverage of the sites scheduled yearly.

“This number in a depot must always have 25% spare capacity available in case the one truck allocated for that site is not available due to any reason such as breakages or going for service.”

The city also denied having not settled its invoices to subcontractors which led to ground workers not getting paid.

“At some stage, our waste partners was reported to have withdrawn its services as an appointed contractor who has been awarded the tender, citing non-payment of their services. The city confirms all invoices received from the contractor have been processed for payment.

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“The city arranged internal depot resources to assist in clearing the backlog caused by the withdrawal of the service provider in those areas.

“Now that the service provider is back, the backlogs have been cleared and the services are running smoothly,“ said Dlamini.