Cleaning Services Tender Debacle Leaves Durban Taxi Ranks Littered With Human Waste

HEALTH HAZARD: Public toilets in the entire Durban metro have become a health hazard. Photo: Supplied

A decision by the eThekwini municipality to cancel a tender for cleaning public toilets at taxi ranks has left many ranks littered with human waste, engulfed in stench, and putting commuters at risk of infection.

The issue started over a year ago when the ANC-EFF-IFP-NFP-run eThekwini municipality cancelled the cleaning services tender.

Sources said this comes after the tender to clean the taxi ranks was flagged by the Auditor General (AG) as irregular. The AG flagged the tender after it was allegedly found that the municipality gave taxi associations the authority to identify which companies would clean the toilets, even though the service was being paid for from municipal coffers.

The municipality then decided to cancel the tender and implement the AG’s recommendation that the tender be re-advertised and that all requirements of the Municipal Finance Management Act (MFMA) be followed to the letter.

“The issue here is that while they are correcting the anomalies that were flagged by the AG, they did not put in interim measures to ensure that the ranks are cleaned. If you go to the CBD, the toilets are closed, and they have placed mobile plastic toilets which are now full, and commuters now opt to relieve themselves in the open, leaving ranks stinking,” a source said.

The African Times visited some of the taxi ranks and found that in some cases, like KwaMashu, there are no mobile toilets at all, while in the Durban CBD, the temporary mobile toilets are overflowing and are not cleaned on a daily basis, thus becoming a health hazard to commuters and the hawkers who sell food nearby.

EThekwini Municipality’s Marketing and Communications Director, Mandla Nsele, confirmed that the Taxi and Bus Rank ablution cleaning service contracts have expired, and that they have since initiated a procurement process to appoint replacement service providers, which is currently underway in line with Supply Chain Management processes.

“In the interim, mobile ablution facilities have been deployed at various taxi and bus rank sites to ensure continued access to sanitation ablution facilities while the procurement process is being finalised,” Nsele said.