Amid the current waste removal crisis in Kempton Park, a petition handed to Parliament by the local DA Mike Waters, MP, will come before the portfolio committee on environmental affairs in Parliament for a follow-up briefing on March 19.
Refuse had been piling up on the sidewalks all over Kempton Park for up to three weeks now with some removal taking place over the weekend.
The petition was handed in on October 8 last year on behalf of the residents of Kempton Park, calling on Parliament to investigate the enforcement of the National Environmental Management Waste Act, 2008 (Act No 59 of 2008) in Ekurhuleni Metro to ensure regular and reliable refuse collection.
“The continuing waste collection crisis has plagued residents for over a year,” Waters said on Friday.
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“Given the metro’s own admission that they are skipping picking up the backlog and simply continuing with their normal schedule, as well as the fact that some areas have had no refuse collection for three weeks, I will be interested to see how the metro tries to wriggle itself out of this crisis and tries to persuade that all is well in the metro,” said Waters.
“It is unacceptable that the metro expects residents to pay for a service they simply do not provide, or provide a sub-standard service. It is theft, and the metro should reimburse the residents.
“The DA councillors are doing everything they can to hold the ANC-run metro to account. However, the mayor, MMC of environmental development and the head of department are simply not interested in the frustrations of Kempton Park residents. In fact, they are showing Kempton Park the middle finger,” Waters said in his statement.
Various questions regarding the poor service were sent to the metro by Kempton Express last week. We have had no reply.
In the meantime, five petitions handed in to the City of Ekurhuleni regarding poor refuse removal, had been closed off by the petitions committee at the end of January, said Ald André du Plessis, shadow MMC environmental development in the DA Ekurhuleni caucus.
In an email addressed to relevant parties in the metro last week, Du Plessis requested that these five petitions be referred to a further hearing, as the explanations provided to the petitions committee by the HOD of environment and waste management services, Faith Mabindisa, were in fact untrue and misleading.
Du Plessis also requested that Mabindisa be called to appear before the ethics committee to give an explanation as to why she blatantly misled the petitions committee in order to initiate the closure of these waste petitions, while she was well aware of the state of collapse within this department.
“The entire Kempton Park has been experiencing severe and ongoing backlogs every week for the past two years. This is now also spilling over into surrounding depots.
“It appears as if the Kempton depot may be utilising the vehicles from surrounding depots in an attempt to fulfill their obligations to the Kempton community. This affects their service delivery as well as their allocated overtime,” Du Plessis said.
