Residents of Kempton Park faced further delays in refuse collection last week.
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Accompanying the lack of waste collection was a frustrating increase in illegal dumping.
On Wednesday last week, the Express paid a visit to Noordrand Road where resident Raymond Manyeke shared his concerns.
According to Manyeke, residents have dealt with illegal dumping in the area for more than five months.
“We have not tried to communicate with the municipality, we assume that they are seeing this each day because they sometimes come and clean up,” said Manyeka.
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He added that waste collectors only visited the area once a month.
“That is why people end up dumping their waste on street corners. When waste collectors do arrive, they only collect a few bins because they do not inform the residents that they are coming.”
The resident believes that the municipality can solve the issue of illegal dumping by placing three skip bins on each street which would need to be collected every week.
Manyeka said dumping causes a bad-smelling environment and discourages people from visiting.
“Rats end up running into our homes.”
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Spokesperson for the City of Ekurhuleni Zweli Dlamini said the department has stabilised the waste collection services and is slowly returning to normal.
“Most areas are now on normal round collections. Residents cannot blame the waste department for the pollution because waste is removed regularly. It may not be done as per the calendar for now but the work is carried out,” said Dlamini.
Dlamini added that the department never encouraged people to embark on illegal dumping.
In responding to Manyeke’s claim that the department collects waste on random days and times, Dlamini said the city had been dealing with challenges which were communicated to residents.
“We have a task team that is working at normalising the service. Once this is done in the next few weeks, the collections will return to normal,” said Dlamini.
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