The city of Ekurhuleni has denied that another waste removal crisis is rearing its dirty head in Kempton Park.
Themba Gadebe, spokesperson for the metro, on Friday afternoon said the current two-day backlog would be cleared by today (Sunday).
The metro reacted to a call by the DA that the city manager must urgently intervene to prevent another collapse of the service.
Ald André du Plessis, DA shadow MMC for environment and waste management, on Friday morning said the cap on overtime of 40 hours a month plays a major role in the problem. He has also called for the suspension of the head of the department.
“City manager Dr Imogen Mashashi has the mandate to allow extra overtime in times of crisis and this should be done,” he said.
“I have it on good authority that the HOD for human resources refuses to release more overtime for employees at the Kempton Park waste depot, when it is in fact the city manager’s responsibility.”
According to Du Plessis they are working day by day with no sustainable plan.
“After the strikes last week, nothing really has been resolved.”
He said with public holidays coming up workers will have to be paid overtime to remove refuse on those days. “If the overtime cap has been reached, they will not be able to remove refuse. Comes end of October, we will be in serious trouble as they are playing catch-up all the time.
“Unless they get contractors in or have a sustainable plan, we will sit with this problem for the next three months. Then comes December with more public holidays.”
Gadebe said the operations had the necessary resources, including access to overtime.
“The alderman’s assertion that the 40-hour cap has been reached and is inaccessible this Friday is untrue, since the department has no record of a request having been made to the city manager and which has, therefore, been denied. The department also has no recording of said overtime having been submitted to human resources.
“The disruption at the depot was resolved by the department’s management led by its MMC and work resumed with a clear recovery plan which quickly stabilised operations.
“Public holidays are taken into consideration during planning and these have no bearing on service delivery.
“The City provides a standard 240l residential waste collection service to ensure that residents have sufficient waste storage capacity to discourage dumping and keep residential areas clean. Residents and councillors are, therefore, urged to use this service optimally and report any challenges to the customer relations management office in the area,” said Gadebe.
