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0 viewsSouth African municipalities are plagued with inefficiencies, but local government can be creative and cost-effective in delivering services. e’Thekwini Metro in Durban is one such municipality.
Although not without its fair share of problems, e’Thekwini has captured the imagination of the world with its innovative sanitation, water and waste management solutions. This time the Cleaning and Solid Waste Unit of Durban Sanitation and Water, aka, The Unit, devised an ingenious method of empowering local entrepreneurs to remove refuse in the informal areas of Durban.
Durban’s geography and informal housing is a nightmare for the municipality. Frequently located on steep hillsides leading down to waterways and streams, informal housing can seldom be accessed by roads. This is a huge problem for formal waste removal services. As a result, The Unit decided to award approximately 374 community-based contracts to provide cleaning and solid waste removal services for the informal housing sector.
Contractors are awarded three-year contracts on the basis of tenders put forward in competition with other tenders submitted. Each successful contractor must employ four general workers, at least 50% of whom have to be women, and all involved have to reside in the area the contract covers. Currently, some 1 496 people are employed under these contracts. Each contractor services between 1 200 to 1 500 households per contract and removes waste once a week from each household. Every awarded contract is worth approximately R25 000 per month and enables operators to generate a minimum income of R15 000 per month.
e’Thekwini runs a tight ship. Awarded contractors are inducted before commencing work to ensure service delivery standards and operation procedures are upheld. New contractors are supervised on-site daily and all the work of the contractors is inspected weekly. The Unit ensures waste is removed from households, public areas between houses, and streets in the area of the contract are kept litter- and waste-free. Payment is withheld, or financial penalties imposed, if the inspection report is negative, and reports are signed off before any payment is disbursed. The Unit has cancelled only between five and eight contracts over the course of the project, which started as a pilot about 10 years ago.
This is real job creation. All contracts cover only three days per week. This enables more contactors to be employed. Limiting the weekly length of contracts also increases the possible numbers of those emerging as competent to grow medium and large waste collection businesses. As those winning contracts develop approved skills, the likelihood of renewing their original tender is increased. Through this, contractors are also awarded additional tenders to manage waste collection in different areas simultaneously, and become medium or large contractors. Twenty of the 374 contractors can be classified as such as they hold multiple tenders. The annual value of these larger contracts is R1 million annually.
The cherry on the cake is the money e’Thekwini saves. The cost to the municipality of removing waste from each household under community-based waste management contracts is R16.50 per household per month, whereas the cost of using municipal formal waste removal services is R41 per household per month.
Several municipalities such as Port Shepstone, Port Edward, and the Hibiscus Coast have broadly copied e’Thekwini and started this project with Ekurhuleni and Port Elizabeth following suit. This is one way to make service delivery more lucrative while improving the quality of life of citizens.
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