Refuse collection is finally under way in Pretoria after waste removal workers, employed on a contract basis by the Tshwane Metro Council went on a two-week-long strike. The workers were demanding overtime payments for September, which the council paid to them last Friday.

Although the strike is over, rubbish is still overflowing in certain parts of the city including at two garden refuse sites in Rooihuiskraal and Dorandia. The council's Dikeledi Phiri says a "damage control" schedule has been devised to fix the problem as soon as possible. It is unclear if Pretoria residents will be billed for services not rendered over the two-week period.

Phiri said: “We devised a schedule to say that during the weekend, employees will report on duty so that the waste can be collected. But, now unfortunately it is only 20% of those employees who reported for duty on Saturday. As a result we could not cover the areas that we intended to cover to erase the backlog”.

“What I think we need to do is to prioritise certain areas where the situation has gone completely out of hand. To such an extent that people have already opened up illegal dumping site. Like the one in Dorandia. We also want to prioritise that and we want to see if we can not collect from that site today;” Phiri added.