Letter: Metro working to eliminate the illegal dumping

I WAS approached by Anne Dollery during the NMBM IDP public participation meeting in Walmer. She complained about illegal dumping in Victoria Drive, Walmer.

She had submitted a letter to The Herald (“Roadside a rubbish dump”, May 17) and encouraged me to submit a letter explaining the challenges of illegal dumping and what we are doing to address those challenges.

Victoria Drive is cleaned on a requirement basis by the waste management sub-directorate. The residents and small businesses however persist in the dumping of waste along this road.

Most dumping takes place after hours when few or no enforcement personnel are available. This problem is however only part of a bigger issue.

During the recent public participation process the residents said they wanted the municipality to reconsider the time of refuse collection, saying 6am was not a feasible time, especially in winter, hence the dumping.

Another challenge is where there are wheely-bins for collection of refuse and residents do not want to leave them on the kerbside, especially if they are at work. This means they will dump the refuse after they come back from work.

Dealing with illegal dumping is not only a public health directorate issue, but also a social and institutional issue. For that reason the NMBM council in 2010 commissioned the public health directorate to draft a strategy to eliminate illegal dumping and to produce an action plan with costs to address such actions.

In 2011 the strategy to eliminate illegal dumping and an action plan was approved. A decision was, however, made to phase in the implementation thereof due to the exorbitant cost of implementation.

The strategy is based on four pillars, namely waste infrastructure (building of drop-off centres), rendering of refuse collection service (increasing frequency of collection), creation of awareness and law enforcement.

Since 2008 the waste management sub-directorate has used co-operatives to carry out waste collection and cleaning in certain areas, mainly where waste collection vehicles could not get access. Ward-based co-operatives will be appointed and will create about 1 000 jobs for ward-based cleaning.

Each ward especially in the townships will have co-operative which will have 15 to 30 workers who will focus in that ward with plant, machinery and trucks for collection of refuse.

The NMBM council embarked on a process some years ago by which drop-off centres were constructed to allow the public to dispose of certain categories of waste which is normally not removed by the kerbside collection service. The provision of these facilities is regarded as a critical component in preventing indiscriminate and illegal dumping.

It is believed that one of the greatest contributors to illegal dumping is the fact that waste was removed once every two weeks from households in certain areas. The standing committee for public health resolved that the refuse collection service to these households must be increased to once a week.

Increasing the frequency of collection was phased in over three years as the funding required to do so could only be provided over this period. On April 18 all households were converted to a weekly service.

A number of community liaison officers have been appointed to roll out awareness programmes at schools and the community in general.

Regarding law enforcement, the NMBM currently has only four town ranger posts, which is totally inadequate to patrol the entire metro area. Twelve additional posts have been created, but no funding exists for the filling thereof.