Durban to get new waste trucks

Durban's Solid Waste (DSW) fleet will receive 75 new refuse collection trucks worth more than R138 million. Mondli Mthembu, the eThekwini’s human settlements and infrastructure committee chairperson, said DSW compiled a replacement schedule for every vehicle and item in the fleet based on norms used by waste management companies in other countries, and many years of experience with the city’s own fleet. The norm with heavy plant on landfills is for the plant to be replaced every 10000 hours, which would be every 3.5 years for DSW. The vehicles are kept for 14years, and in some cases, longer. Refuse collection vehicles have a special dispensation where they are allowed a legal load of 10.2 tons.

“Underfunding in this unit has been a known historical practice with periodic injections of additional funding when breakpoint is being approached,” Mthembu said. Recent examples of this are 2002 and 2009 when an additional R60m and R92m respectively was provided to bring the fleet back to acceptable operating levels, but not to full parity. “Seven years on DSW is once again approaching a crisis where a large injection of funding is required to be able to continue with the high standard of service delivery expected,” he said. Mthembu said the purchasing process was still in the tendering stages. He said 75 new heavy duty vehicles, depending on the tender prices, would be purchased to replace the 14-year-old ones.

Some of the existing trucks would be sold, while some would be retained in the pool, he said. “Each truck will cost about R1.6m and at this stage a supplier has not been identified. As soon as the tender process is completed, we will know when to receive these trucks. Most of the specifications such as make will be based on the outcome of the tenders received,” Mthembu said. He said the compactor capacity for each truck would range from 10.5 to 19 cubic metres with fuel tank capacity of 200 litres. Heinz de Boer, DA committee member, said the replacement of the trucks was long overdue. “They are old and worn down. There’s a lot of wear and tear. The moratorium preventing the purchasing of vehicles about two years ago has delayed the replacement of the fleet.

“Now there will be no more excuse for the city to fail to collect waste,” De Boer said. During 2014 and 2015, a moratorium was imposed to prevent buying of vehicles, and this resulted in the DSW falling behind on its replacement programme by about R118.3m made up of both under funding and the unspent funds. Mdu Nkosi, IFP committee member, said he was sceptical about how the process was carried out. This was the only party that did not support the recommendation to replace the fleet. “This item should have been brought up just after the municipal budget when it is known that the money is available. You can’t be making recommendations and wait for the availability of funds,” said Nkosi.