I am extremely pleased that reports reaching my office this evening (Sunday, 18^th June 2006) reveal that the City has overcome the refuse removal backlog.

Intense work on the R4 million three-month intervention in the face of the refuse problem which resulted in piles of uncollected bags in the streets is over and our teams start with a clean slate this morning to sustain the situation.

We now have the required 14 trucks in the coastal trucks with four on standby in case of any downtime so I am assured that our refuse team is on top of it all. It will mean the City will not have to bring any of the 10 trucks down from the King William's Town area and work overtime in the coastal area.

I hope that the situation can be sustained until we get the six new trucks in October to complement our ageing fleet. These are shortcomings we inherited, both operationally and in extending our services to the formerly marginalised areas more intensely and professionally.

Refuse removal is a massive task. According to our key indicators report submitted to national government last year, an annual average of 255 000 tons of solid waste is generated, which includes 30 000 tons of industrial waste. We have 140 street sweepers daily in the CBDs. There are 157 toilet blocks situated throughout the municipality, including the CBDs, picnic areas and informal settlements. There are seven waste disposal sites: King, NU2 Mdantsane, Second Creek, Ducats, Riegerton, Gonubie and Dimbaza. We have spent millions on the regional waste site at Berlin coming onstream.

I am positive that we will be able to overcome this problem and beside tasking all 89 councillors to overseer their wards' cleanliness, I have appointed a task team to drive the three-month intervention which will create about 900 jobs.

The logistical arrangements for the project scheduled to be launched on 26th June, 2006, is being put in place

Zintle Peter
EXECUTIVE MAYOR
18^th June, 2006

Ends press release.

(For further information contact the Director: Office of the Executive Mayor, Matthew Moonieya on 083 229 4067)