The City of Ekurhuleni has bought an additional 23 waste removal trucks to ensure its refuse removal service stays on schedule.
These vehicles will be delivered in November.
Furthermore, all waste removal trucks servicing Kempton Park that are in the workshop for repairs will be repaired by September 30.
This comes after constant backlogs have been experienced, especially in Kempton Park.
Acting metro spokesperson Solly Mashabela said on Friday: “The City of Ekurhuleni is enhancing its waste removal functions to eradicate backlogs, particularly in Kempton Park, where there have been persistent waste removal backlogs due to the allocated fleet size and higher proportion of deployed vehicles being booked for repairs.
“The City has developed a plan to turn around the situation and deliver waste removal services of a standard expected by our customers,” he said.
The City will also deploy vehicle tracking technology across the whole fleet to constantly monitor it for functionality, location and driving patterns to ensure its optimal use. Vehicles and personnel will be rerouted to areas in need of more resources whenever backlogs accumulate in any specific areas.
Various other measures are also being put in place.
Working with organised labour, the City will review roles and responsibilities of affected personnel to enhance capacity. Standby mechanics will be activated to reduce the impact of vehicle breakdowns, and two-way radio communication technology will be used among relevant officials to reduce the length of response time to complaints of vehicle breakdowns and requests for rerouting of vehicles.
Waste removal staff will be re-assigned to different teams whenever they are affected by breakdowns instead of working in depots, to minimise backlogs and the need for overtime work.
The MMC for environment and waste management, Clr Khosi Mabaso, said: “We are putting all measures and resources in place to rid ourselves of the persistent waste removal challenges. We are confident that the measures we have put in place will be adequate to result in uninterrupted services.”
The services of private waste removers have been sought through open bidding and the supply chain management process in relation thereto will be concluded in November.
In the meantime, a contract that is already in place for some selected areas will be extended to cover Kempton Park as and when the need arises.
A joint operations centre that sits bi-weekly has been established to monitor progress and implementation of the recovery and turnaround plan, while fast-tracking inter-departmental communication for quicker response time to bottlenecks.
