Minister, inadequate waste services led to unpleasant living conditions and contamination of the environment. What processes are in place to address the historical backlog of waste services between urban areas and rural areas? Thank you.
The MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES: Hon member, I
think this is a very important question. What we know in our country is that, at the moment, only 65% of households have regular weekly collection of their waste. If you look at where the 35% where there
is not regular collection of waste, almost 100% of that is in rural areas. And areas such as the Eastern Cape, the far northern parts of KwaZulu- Natal, in particular, have a very extreme situation with regard to no-waste collection.
However, from the kind of work that we are doing to support municipalities, you would see, another problem is that communities have to dispose of their own waste, but there are not necessarily any licensed areas that can receive that waste. The consequence of that is the widespread dumping.
The reason that we are working with local government on amending the MIG policy is because in many instances, municipalities do not have the budget to effect regular waste services. While services such as electricity and water are subsidised through the free basic service mechanism, there is no mechanism currently to subsidise waste collection. We are working on this particular amendment because we think that it will assist municipalities that are in distress.
However, you would understand that this is an extremely complicated process, because it relates to the weaknesses of municipalities, it relates the lack of revenue streams of those municipalities and it also relates to the lack of infrastructure.
It is why we are also looking at establishing buy-back centres for waste, so that we put a monetary value to waste. If people can start to see various waste streams as income streams and revenue streams, there might be a greater willingness to return those particular waste streams that are causing major problems in the environment. They can return plastic to the buy-back centres, so that we can divert it from other landfills or environmental degradation. Thank you.