City filthy as bins at depot left to ruin

WHILE Buffalo City Metro (BCM) residents and businesses complained about uncollected waste and filthy streets, hundreds of wheelie and street bins have been collecting dust at a Buffalo City Metro (BCM) depot.

The Daily Dispatch visited the depot in King William’s Town (KWT), located behind Wellington Street, earlier this week, where hundreds of BCMbranded black plastic wheelie bins and green street bins were stacked inside the depot yard.

A security guard at the gate said he was not sure why the bins where there and confirmed they had been at the depot for years.

The chairman of the ratepayers’ association in KWT and Bhisho, Monde Ciko, said the bins had been at the depot for almost three years and were meant to be distributed to residents in some of the suburbs as substitutes for refuse bags.

“In 2013, the municipality stopped supplying refuse bags to some of the areas and we went to the depot to inquire why they had stopped.

“We were told they were replacing black bags with the wheelie bins.

“We believed them because we could see the bins,” he said.

Ciko said a few years later, after the bins had still not been distributed, they went back to the depot.

“We were told the bins were not in an acceptable condition as the metal holding the wheels had been stolen on some of the bins,” said Ciko.

The Dispatch also noticed some of the bins were without wheels.

BCM had not responded to questions at the time of writing yesterday. The mayor’s spokesman, Sibusiso Cindi, said he was still waiting for responses.

In 2013, the metro advertised a tender for the supply and delivery of 18 000 wheelie bins.

In 2014, it issued another tender for an estimated 6 000 wheelie bins.

The Dispatch previously reported on a letter dated November 2013 from the Department of National Treasury addressed to the then BCM municipal manager, Andile Fani. It was stated that R52-million had been approved as part of the Urban Settlement Development grant for the procurement of wheelie bins, trucks and mechanical sweepers. The letter was tabled in a council document in response to BCM’s application for a roll-over of unspent conditional grants for the 201213 financial year.

One of the conditions for approval of the wheelie bins included the submission of the integrated development plan and the service delivery budget implementation plan, the procurement of waste skips and purchase of six mechanical sweepers.

A budget breakdown attached to the letter showed that R14.2-million had been set aside for 17 800 wheelie bins at R800 each, and R1.65-million for 150 waste skips at R11 000 each.

Earlier this year, close to 60 businesses at the Oriental Plaza complained about uncollected waste at the plaza. —