Okahandja still in turmoil over garbage problem

Despite many residents still being unhappy about uncollected garbage, the Okahandja municipality believes that the garden town’s garbage problems will be resolved by Tuesday.“Enough is enough,” said Okahandja resident Lilly Opperman yesterday, as she unloaded her bags of household rubbish in front of the Okahandja municipality’s door.

“I went to the municipality to offload my garbage bag at 11:00 this morning and informed them. The bag had already been removed by 11:30,” the Okahandja resident said a while later.

This follows after the Okahandja municipality’s executive head, Alfons Tjitombo, explained to Namibia Media Holdings last week that the town’s rubbish removal services would be back up and running by Thursday last week.

However, residents of the town aired their grievances over the ongoing issue yesterday.

Problem being resolved

Resident Doreen Koen said that she last saw a garbage removal truck in the town last month, but that a white single-cab bakkie sometimes removes rubbish in truck loads.

The municipality’s manager for environmental health and emergency services, Julia Hukununa, explained that this bakkie is used to remove rubbish in plastic bags to ease the burden on the municipality’s new truck.

She said that since a new rubbish removal truck was obtained last week, the municipality has not been able to keep up with the demand for rubbish removal.

“We have obtained a truck that is currently servicing the Nau-Aib area. We will still be busy removing the garbage that has accumulated over the past few days until tomorrow,” she said.

Hukununa said that the municipality still hopes to remove household rubbish once a week as before, despite the fact that there is only one working vehicle removing rubbish instead of the usual four used for this purpose.

According to Hukununa, the municipality is expected to remove the last of the remaining rubbish today.