City acts to clean up beaches

THE eThekwini Municipality will hire an extra 75 cleaners to clear up Durban’s beaches – and introduce a new night shift to cope with the mess left behind by late-night revellers.

Simon Nyawo of the Durban Solid Waste department, told a National Marine Week media briefing yesterday his department planned to employ another 50 day staff and 25 night staff.

They would focus mainly on the stretch between the Suncoast Casino and the Green Hub at Blue Lagoon.

The department currently employs about 220 day cleaners to control litter throughout the city, 40 of whom are deployed on the beachfront during the day. About 90 staff are deployed from 2pm to 10pm to clean up the central business district, Warwick Avenue Triangle and the beachfront.

“At the moment we don’t have a ‘midnight’ shift, but soon we will have two shifts – split during the night so we can also cover the gap period from 10pm to 6am.”

Apart from Durban Solid Waste staff, the eThekwini Parks, Leisure and Cemeteries department also employs 70 litter pickers and 30 law enforcement officers.

Sbusiso Mkhwanazi, the acting head of the parks department, said city manager S’bu Sithole had issued the recent instruction to hire more night staff to cope with mess on the city’s beachfront.

Municipal staff had also been instructed to ensure that public toilets were open at night, to avoid people relieving themselves on pavements and verges at the beachfront.

Currently public toilets were generally open from 6am to 6pm in winter and 6am to 10pm in summer. They were only open 24 hours a day in the June and December holidays.

Overtime

Mkhwanazi said hiring more staff to clean litter and maintain public toilets would push up overtime payments.

Commenting on the recent award of Blue Flags to the uShaka and Westbrook beaches, Mkhwanazi said the city manager was determined to ensure eThekwini sewage and wastewater treatment works were properly maintained.

Managers of those treatment works would now be held personally liable, to limit sewage overflows.

He said Blue Flag standards had not changed, despite criticism from former city manager Michael Sutcliffe who challenged whether the same water quality standards could be applied to Durban and Cape Town, apparently on the basis that E coli bacteria multiplied faster in Durban’s warmer surf conditions.

Mkhwanazi said: “Blue Flag standards are strictly international standards and the new leadership decided to correct what was wrong. Top of this list is the issue of sanitation – so if there are sewage leaks we need to fix the treatment stations or build new ones.”