Cleaning the streets of a deserted Cape Town city centre is still dirty work, even during the nationwide lockdown that initially saw the busy CBD stripped of its usual footfall. Tonnes of waste was still generated – and diligently collected by heroic cleaners on the frontline.
On any given day, the CCID’s cleaners, clad in their signature yellow uniforms, are a welcoming presence in the Cape Town Central City. Tasked with cleaning up after hundreds of thousands of people who work, live, visit and do business in the usually vibrant CBD, teams from the CCID Urban Management department pick and sweep up waste to ensure the CBD remains free of grime.
Enter March 2020 and the arrival in South Africa of the pernicious coronavirus. Stringent Lockdown measures instituted by the Government to stem the spread of infection ordered people to work remotely, and businesses to close their doors to adhere to Level 5 regulations (the most punishing) unless they were performing an essential service, like the CCID.
“Initially, some of the biggest concerns centred around crime and grime,” says CCID CEO Tasso Evangelinos, with the CCID’s operational departments, namely Safety & Security, Social Development and Urban Management, having to change their strategies during the lockdown. “Our cleaning strategy had to shift: we still covered all areas of the CBD within our footprint but we focused on deep cleaning particular spaces.”
TONNES OF WASTE
Be that as it may, CCID cleaners still collected 44.5 tonnes of waste in March 2020, 35.5 tonnes of waste in April and 42.2 tonnes in May. Statistics released by the CCID’s Urban Management department reveal that cleaners contracted via J&M Services picked up, on average, 40.7 tonnes of rubbish from 1 March 2020 to 31 May 2020. While this is a drop from the average 72 tonnes per month the CCID picked up in the CBD in 2019, it is still a surprising amount of waste for a city centre shut down by measures to stem the tide of a global pandemic.
The CCID offers a top-up cleaning service in the CBD, in addition to that provided by its partner, the City of Cape Town. Its heroic cleaners, together with those from the City, have been on the frontline providing an essential service since the lockdown began on 26 March 2020, working during levels 5, 4 and 3 to clean the CBD – a relentless and expensive task.
Keeping the Central City grime-free costs the CCID millions of rands every year. In 2019, the CCID spent R30 000 per day to clean the CBD, amounting to an annual spend of R11 million. This is in addition to the standard removal of waste (which includes litter as well as organic matter such as leaves, twigs and soil) by the City of Cape Town.
What’s more, cigarette-butt litter, collected from the CCID’s 300 cigarette-butt bins, usually amounts to over 1 000 kg per year.Last year, the CCID collected 1 763 kg of cigarette butts from the CBD. Cigarette-butt litter during lockdown, especially during levels 5 and 4, was minimal as the footfall of people entering and leaving the city centre was very low, with desperate smokers actually tipping over many of the nearly empty bins in search of an “entjie” or two!
THE NEW NORMAL
Kally Benito, assistant manager of CCID Urban Management, says the CCID’s cleaning teams, contracted via J&M Cleaning Services and NGO Straatwerk, have had to be agile in adjusting to the new circumstances presented by Covid-19. “Initially we operated with J&M cleaning teams, with a roaming team from Straatwerk only doing ‘hot-spot’ cleaning and litter picking where required,” says Benito. Level 5 and 4 restrictions gave the department the “rare opportunity” to focus on deep cleaning and sanitising specific zones and attending to maintenance projects.
Benito says: “We ramped up our levels of de-sanitising the streets to keep the public safe. Sanitising the CBD efficiently and effectively is important to reassure people who are returning to work and do business here that their safety is of prime concern.
“To this end we also launched a sanitising project in July whereby four Sanitising Ambassadors deep-clean all commonly touched infrastructure in town every week day, including pedestrian buttons, railings, benches, bollard tops and the lids of green street-pole refuse bins,” she says.
The safety of the CCID’s cleaning teams, who are now all back on duty, is also of utmost importance, Benito emphasises. As essential workers, the street cleaning teams were given stringent re-education on hygiene and sterilisation protocols and learning new steps to be taken for additional protocols. The issuing of personal protection equipment before each shift, regular hand-washing breaks, and de-contamination steps before and after each shift are now mandatory for every employee.
“We are so fortunate to have a committed group of cleaning staff who have been active since Lockdown began, and who have worked tirelessly to keep up with our risk-reduction strategies. The economy depends on us now.”
IMAGES: Atmosphere, CCID
Note: This article appeared in the winter edition of City Views.