“The City of Tshwane wishes to make it categorically clear that it won’t relax the tightened specification for the refuse removal contract,” said City of Tshwane spokesperson Selby Bokaba in a voice note released to the media on Monday evening.
“The City implemented the SS01 waste removal contract with effect from 15 July 2024, after the tender was approved by the bid adjudication committee (BAC),” he said.
“The city reviewed and tightened the tender specification this time around, to improve efficiency of the service based on the lessons learned from previous tenders awarded,” he said.
He pointed out that the specifications include their new conditions namely:
1.e-Natis valid certificate to verify the road worthiness of the vehicle, to present the vehicle on site, and to ensure that the vehicle certificate is not fraudulent.
2. Installation of a tracking device to verify that the allocated routes have been travelled by the waste removal vehicle.
3. Vehicles must not be older than 9 years to prevent the frequent breakdown of an old vehicle and to minimize the wear and tear of the compuction mechanism.
He revealed that these conditions would also apply to sub-contractors as well.
He said the City of Tshwane compared its tender specifications to other municipalities in Gauteng regarding waste removal vehicles and discovered that the Joburg and Ekurhuleni municipalities’ specifications require that vehicles may not be older than 5 years and 3 years respectively.
Meanwhile, subcontractors whose contracts have been terminated have voiced out their grievances to Tshwane Talks.
“We are saying these trucks of ours have been working all along and we are surprised that the City has now brought up the issue of the vehicles’ ages,” said one contractor Ephraim Mojapelo.
He emphasised that as a contractor he was doing his job diligently and would fire any sub-contractor who failed to deliver as expected of him.
The subcontractors talked exclusively to Tshwane Talks on Monday morning at Burgerspark in the City of Tshwane.
Another contractor Sello Mashego pointed out that the municipality is hiding the fact that it doesn’t pay contractors on time, and this leads to contractors in turn failing to pay subcontractors on time.
“This has led to subcontractors being unable to get loans from banks as they are unable to pay the banks in time and are therefore not credit worthy,” he said.
He pointed out that they as contractors have tried to organise themselves into one group with representatives engaging the City of Tshwane on their behalf but the mayor and his MMC have so far refused to meet their representatives.
The contractors say they don’t even know where the new contractor comes from and that it was unfair for the municipality to terminate their contractors in favour of outsiders.
“At the moment there are no water tankers and waste removal trucks doing work in the townships due to the cancellation if the contracts,” said bitter contractor Mashego.
Yet another subcontractor pointed out that by reducing the number of water tanks and waste removal trucks mayor Brink’s wants to create the impression that he is saving money for the City of Tshwane but is actually doing so at the expense of service delivery in the townships.