Cape Town - A forensic investigation into the collapse of waste collection services in townships across Cape Town has outed Mayco member for urban waste management Grant Twigg and a high-ranking City of Cape Town official as those responsible.
The shocking report, leaked to the Cape Argus, states that the formation of a new “in-house” model was undertaken with no delegated authority by Twigg and his executive director Luzuko Mdunyelwa.
According to the internal report given to councillors at the last council meeting in December the new model has resulted in high court action against the municipality and a staggering budget of more than R500 million in a cost comparison.
According to the report, the Urban Waste Management Department opted to terminate external service providers from July 1 last year.
It states that City manager Lungelo Mbandazayo became aware of the pilot project and after it was found that Mdunyelwa had changed the model without any proper due diligence, he instructed that the external service providers be called back.
It was also found that the change in the model was not in line with the Local Government Finance Management Act.
During the investigation, it was found that the municipality had 21 active tenders for cleansing and 15 tenders active for waste collection.
At the time, the City had received 18 902 complaints of which 38% were from areas being serviced by external services providers. The majority of these related to illegal dumping sites while two referred to overflowing containers in Valhalla Park and Philippi.
At the end of May last year, one of the external service providers lodged an application in the Western Cape High Court.
The report reveals that a memo circulated among staff during the same month showed the directorate would be implementing a new project called “Siyazenzela Cleaning Programme”.
“This memo was issued four days before the executive director received the project plan, which indicates that he had made up his mind to proceed with the project without considering all possible advice as it indicates that tenders were terminated without authority,” the report said.
At the time, Twigg accompanied by mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis, joined City waste removal staff to thank them for their efforts to sustain basic services to the Kosovo informal settlement and broader Philippi East amid violent threats and extortion attempts affecting refuse collection. At the time, they revealed that law enforcement had been escorting City staff to ensure services continued in the area.
In a budget breakdown on the cost associated with the implementation of the new project, it was found that the budget for various cleaning services had nearly doubled from R314 million to a staggering R514m.
According to a Cape Argus source, the report is being kept hush but a resolution was taken for the matter to be further investigated.
“It’s all being kept very hush but the report shows that the executive director and Twigg did their own thing. They wanted to do it in-house and then it flopped, leaving many areas unserviced. We were told over 300 informal settlements were affected as the cleaning services just collapsed.”
This report concluded: “The investigation indicates that the executive director and the Mayco member were not only involved but responsible for changing the service delivery model which resulted in the collapse of the service in informal settlements without any proper due diligence.”
Twigg said he was unable to comment on any of the findings in the report and referred the Cape Argus to the City manager.
City spokesperson Priya Reddy said: “As this investigation is ongoing it would be inappropriate to comment at this time.”