The Witness

The Witness: "Fed up with all the filth"
BUSINESSES in the city are angered by the filth that has engulfed pavements in front of their establishments and have called on the Msunduzi Municipality management, councillors and employees to reach a compromise and get on with the cleaning of the city.

Garbage has piled up since the employees in the waste management, traffic and electricity divisions downed tools last Wednesday.

Virtually every street in the central business district has piles of uncollected rubbish, and in some streets plastic, cardboard boxes, paper and bottles lie strewn on pavements and streets and in gutters. Residential suburbs have piles of rubbish bags still uncollected.

The street with the most rubbish seems to be Church Street. Refuse lies scattered all along the street, even blocking some stormwater drains.

Irate businesses and residents said they are being held to ransom by the municipality while the services that they pay for are being abandoned.

“This is ridiculous. We are losing customers because of the filth in front of the business,” said John Nkwanyana of Champion Chicken in Church Street.

Dr Sibusiso Simelane, one of the owners of the Mpilenhle Medical Centre in Church Street, said the rubbish is a disturbance.

“The town is dirty … I hope they work out their differences.”

A man who owns a TV repair shop said there are rats in his establishment and they are chewing his cables.

Commuters and informal traders at the Market Square taxi rank said the rubbish at the entrance is stinking badly and affecting their health.

But municipal employees are adamant that they will not halt their protest and start cleaning the city unless their call for the implementation of Section 139 of the Constitution — under which the municipality can be put under administration — is heeded.

Today they will embark on a massive march and will hand over their memorandum of grievances to Co-operative Governance MEC Nomusa Dube at the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature.

Sakhile Ngcobo, deputy chairman of the SA Municipal Workers’ Union in Pietermaritzburg, confirmed that the march will include employees from all of the municipality’s divisions.

He said that although the marchers will insist on receiving their overtime payments, chief among their demands is for Dube to dissolve the council’s executive committee (Exco) and take over the running of the municipality.

Marchers who had gathered in Havelock Road yesterday told The Witness that they want the municipality to be “cleansed” of all corruption and that the process must begin with dissolving Exco.

At a special Exco meeting yesterday afternoon, it was resolved that the issue of overtime payments should be considered for those who have worked legal overtime.

Mayor Zanele Hlatshwayo said she has told the MEC that it is unfair for workers who were authorised to work overtime to be penalised by not being paid.

She said the managers who authorised the overtime should pay the workers.