Durban - THE Durban Solid Waste (DSW) unit is facing myriad challenges, including a shortage of vehicles and an ageing fleet that breaks down frequently, which is impacting on its mandate to manage waste in eThekwini Municipality.
The problem is so serious that the unit is spending R1.5 million a month on the hiring of vehicles to collect refuse in uMlazi township alone because it does not have the capacity to do this work internally.
The issues have led to the DSW unit being unable to carry out its mandate optimally and therefore bearing the brunt of consumer complaints about poor service delivery.
DSW head Raymond Rampersad spoke to The Mercury yesterday about the challenges facing the unit.
The issue of the ageing fleet vehicles came to the fore during a budget debate recently when councillors questioned why DSW had budgeted more than R18m to maintain old vehicles when it was given more than R500m in 2020 to buy new vehicles.
In 2020, the council approved R560m to purchase new vehicles and R175m was to be spent in 2021. Councillors said as far as they were aware, “hardly any” new vehicles had been delivered.
However, Rampersad said they had received about 29 vehicles last year and the unit was expecting more in June this year. DSW plans to spend about R183m on these vehicles. He said the challenge was that even with the purchases, it was still not enough vehicles as those bought only served to replace old vehicles.
This, he said, did not take into account that the population of the city was growing and more resources were needed.
He said if, for example, the vehicles were originally meant to cater for 10 000 people five years ago, the number of vehicles has remained the same, even though the population has grown to 50 000. This has created other complications such as staff shortages and use of overtime.
“In the uMlazi area, we had to outsource the service of refuse collection because we did not have the capacity to do it internally. To do the service in uMlazi alone, it is costing us R1.5m each month,” he said.
He said to efficiently run refuse collection services, the city needed one compactor truck for every 16 000 households. Currently, it has 125 collection vehicles that service 1.2 million residents.
“It is not just the shortage of vehicles that is a challenge, it is also the procurement of spares. The procurement is centralised through the supply chain or City Fleet; you cannot source individual quotes as a unit as that is a violation of council policy.
“So if the vehicle has smooth tyres, we cannot send that vehicle to the public. We are held accountable for sending such a vehicle to the public (in case of an accident) and we have to pull it from service while we send a request for new tyres.
“That means that vehicle is not working, which affects the collection schedule. People do not see these challenges, all they see is that the refuse has not been collected,” he said.
Opposition party councillors, however, expressed concerns saying “hardly any” new vehicles had been delivered.
EFF councillor Themba Mvubu, said during the budget debate that the DSW fleet was budgeted for and approved but “to date, the new fleet has not been delivered, instead the city is asking for millions for maintenance instead of moving with the new fleet”.
DA councillor Mzamo Billy said councillors had toured the DSW facilities in May and there were “hardly any” new vehicles. He said the party had written to Rampersad requesting an urgent investigation into the R560m that was approved by council to purchase the new DSW fleet.
“Through the visit we have also learnt that there’s hardly been any new fleet delivered and the workshop continues to be inundated with trucks that are old and breaking down requiring attention.
“This, even though in 2020, council approved funding of R560m for the DSW fleet replacement programme over the next four financial years. In June 2021, council approved R176m for the new DSW fleet.”
He said the vehicles they found at the DSW workshop were between 10 and 25 years old, adding that R57m which had been provided to the DSW workshop this financial year for maintenance and repairs of the old fleet had already been exhausted.
IFP councillor Mdu Nkosi said they had hoped that the purchasing of new vehicles would build internal capacity to allow the unit to deliver services in uMlazi.
“We should not always just criticise the unit, we should also look at whether they have the capacity to deliver. That is why in this budget (coming into effect in July) we called for overtime to be cut and for more people to be employed.”