FCC vows to fight illegal litter dumping

Pini Bothoko | Thursday January 9, 2014 15:59

The Operation Clean-Up is part of an aggressive campaign that is being undertaken by the city leadership as part of an investor attraction drive.

This was said by the city major James Kgalajwe during a media briefing Tuesday following a recent lightning raid on vendors and hawkers’ stalls at the bus rank and Central Business District (CBD).

Kgalajwe said that they are working hard at attracting investors into the city and that they can only achieve that with a clean environment.

He said that is why they have launched an exercise to raid vendors and hawkers, and will move to other sectors in the city in making sure that the whole city becomes clean. He said that there was a lot of construction going on and that contractors had a tendency of indiscriminately dumping litter.

Kgalajwe warned that such people would face arrest and prosecution, as such is illegal.

“If you can go around the city locations, you will see that there is a lot of litter dumped elsewhere.

“We want to stop this by enforcing the law and making sure that the culprits are brought to book for them to answer for their deeds,” he said.

He said people should be educated about waste management so as to be able to turn litter into a business.

Meanwhile Kgalajwe lamented the dire shortage of resources that has hampered their efforts to be able to meet the right standards of making the city clean.

“We only have three trucks collecting litter the whole city at the moment while 11 trucks have broken down.

“We intend to buy three more trucks very soon and small cars to do the supervision of collection of litter around the city,” he said.

He said that over the years, annually P7 million goes to waste on litter picking, commonly known as ‘tlhomelatlhomela’.

Kgalajwe said that they decided to outsource some of its duties of collection of waste in some locations in the city and resources permitting, intend to expand into other areas in future. He said that in places like Monarch and Blocks, they have engaged private companies to do litter picking and there has been a visible improvement in the cleanliness of the areas. Kgalajwe said that they have a problem at the bus rank where they are still contemplating moving vegetable vendors to a horticultural market space behind Department of Fire offices.

He said that vendors at the bus rank numbered over 800 and that it was not an easy task for them as FCC to control littering looking at such a huge number, which keeps increasing, everyday.

“We are going to move all vendors selling vegetables from trucks to the horticultural market because they use parking space reserved for commuters coming into the malls, “ said Kgalajwe.

Kgalajwe said that they have been benchmarking with the city of Genk in Belgium for 10 years now through twinning and have learnt sorting of waste.

He said that they intend to involve private companies with expertise in litter sorting to handle the process of waste management.

“We have benefited a lot from them (Belgians). They have taught us strategies on waste management using long-term strategies, “ he said.

He said that they managed to address wastewater management at Mambo with the Belgians’ help before handing the project to Water Utilities Corporation (WUC).

Kgalajwe said that last year they sent two FCC employees for a two-weeks waste management course.

Two other employees took a wastewater management course at the same period.

“We really hope with their knowledge they will be able to improve waste management in the city,” said Kgalajwe.