Joburg - The City of Joburg has unveiled 41 new tipper trucks that will ensure that illegal dumping becomes a thing of the past in most regions of the city.
The mayor of the City of Joburg, Mpho Phalatse, said illegal dumping costs the city more than R80 million per year and most of the time led to health and environmental problems in communities.
Phalatse said the trucks had cost the municipality R60m.
Most municipal services had been compromised in the City of Joburg because of the expired fleet contract that had left the municipality unable to pay service providers.
Pikitup was one of the municipal entities that was expected to suffer because of problems with the contract. But the unveiling of these trucks has provided hope for residents of the City of Gold.
“The tippers will enable us to meaningfully combat illegal dumping and littering across the city’s seven regions. There are at any given point approximately 3000 illegal dump sites in Joburg costing the city R80m per annum to clear with littering coating the city R74m annually,” Phalatse said.
She said despite the city’s acquisition of the trucks, Pikitup needed communities to play active roles in ensuring that the streets were clean and the environment pleasant for human habitation.
“These illegal dumping sites often happen in the open and often with the blessing of the people who want to make a quick buck by offering plots of state or privately-owned land for illegal dumping at a cost,” Phalatse said.
She said the fleet symbolised the multiparty government’s ongoing commitment to the city and its 6 million residents.
“Let’s get to work; let’s continue with the repair and rebuild our city. Only if we join efforts as the city and residents can we truly begin to see a better city that we can call be proud of,” she said.
Last week, Phalatse survived a motion of no confidence from opposition parties. Despite this, she said her eyes were fixed on service delivery until she left the mayoral chair.
“We do not take the privilege to lead and the responsibility to deliver services to residents of the City of Gold for granted, we are here because of the residents and we must therefore dedicate all our efforts and even accelerate our service delivery programmes to ensuring (the city) looks and feels better,” Phalatse said.