06 Aug 2013

Kweneng District Council (KDC) is owed more than P3 million by some of the companies disposing waste at Gamodubu landfill.

Kweneng District chief health public officer, Mr Joseph Banyatsang says clients using the landfill should understand that running the landfill is costly and as such should pay to enable smooth operation of the facility.

In an interview, Mr Banyatsang stated that if the landfill could stop functioning, companies would have to find ways of disposing waste.“This is not a place you just dump waste and go, there are ways in which waste is handled and this involve compaction, covering using heavy plant machinery and incineration so that waste is properly managed and this is at high costs,” he said.

Furthermore, he said the council was engaging those disposing waste at the landfill to enter into a signed agreement, adding that by end of September, no company including government institutions such as hospitals, would be allowed to utilise the facility if they would not have signed the agreement.

“All those using the landfill should make sure they do that without fail to avoid disappointment, they can collect documents at the landfill site, Mogoditshane Sub-district sanitation office or KDC headquarters in Molepolole,” saids Mr Banyatsang.

He also stated that about 600 companies were using the landfill and the numbers of registering companies were increasing. He said they normally wrote warning letters to those failing to pay , noting that some persistently ignored the reminders. “We are considering options like banning them from using the facility and follow the legal route to recover the money,” he said.

He also highlighted that the landfill had a capacity of 65 000 tonnes per annum though it received an average of 80 000 tonnes of waste per annum, which was more than the projected waste that it was designed to handle also putting strain on the resources and there was likelihood to reduce the lifespan of the facility.

However he said about 80 per cent of waste entering the landfill was recyclable saying the council was working on engaging a private company to do waste reclamation at a larger scale stating that within a period of less than a month, they would have signed a contract with that company.

Mr Banyatsang said the council was still looking at practical ways of introducing prepaid system, saying since there were several factors to be considered this might take sometime. He pointed out another challenge of frequent machinery breakdown.

“Compacters are not there and there is no where they can be hired, we use specialised machines which depend on the parts and sometimes those parts are not available in South Africa, we are in the process to have service and maintenance contract,” he said. ENDS