Rundu
Furious Rundu residents want the town council to improve the pace at which waste contractors collect refuse in and around town.
Failure to do this, residents warned, could see the whole town become an absolute dump site.
“Every month we pay the town council to collect waste from our store. We put out the waste for collection but maybe they don’t have trucks,” said a displeased Spar owner Alberto Felisberto.
“You see all the shops throwing their rubbish at the street corners for it to be collected – I don’t know what is happening.” Uncollected refuse gets blown around by the wind, making the streets an eyesore.
The town council is accused of awarding waste collection tenders to incompetent people, with allegations that the tenders are sometimes given to companies which don’t have the logistical capacity to do the job.
New Era spoke to the head of community services at Rundu Town Council, Fransiska Thikerete, who said that the council does monitor the contractors who collect waste.
“We do this through our assigned teams. We have our foreman for solid waste management and the health inspector who see if contractors do their jobs according to the schedule or not, and they do that weekly,” Thikerete said.
She added that if contractors don’t deliver services as expected the council deducts money from their payments.
“The contractors are given zones or areas of operation, and they are supposed to collect waste weekly. You’d expect them to fulfil the contractual agreement but then there are challenges such as some not having their own trucks and they rent from others.”
Thikerete said that counci, at the start of the financial year in July took a decision to buy two compactor trucks to collect refuse themselves in times of crises. Currently the council operates only one skip truck.
She further warned contractors failing in their duty that the council could terminate their contracts.
“We can’t allow such a situation – we have contractors who agreed to do the work but yet the town is dirty,” she said.