During the five week Pikitup strike, COJ official Mr Thabo Maisela met with
representatives from the City Improvement District (CID) Forum and CID managers at the request of The Executive Mayor Councillor  Mpho Franklyn (Parks) Tau. The meeting was called to find solutions for the crisis faced by Johannesburg as a consequence of the illegal Pikitup strike by
SAMWU workers, which left the city covered with large piles of mounting refuse.

While
CIDs are intended to provide supplementary services to those provided by the
City, the Pikitup strike left COJ with a refuse crisis that demanded assistance from private sector partners.

During the strike, COJ had to focus their limited resources on the highly populated townships and
informal settlements to avoid a health crisis. The CIDs and voluntary
management initiatives in Johannesburg stepped in to partner with the City
and helped to remove piles of refuse from their areas.

In conjunction
with the clean-up campaign, CID managers were encouraged to flag hotspots where bylaws where being broken and maintenance was required. This process was aimed at ensuring
other city entities such as the Johannesburg Roads Agency (JRA) and Joburg
Water did not neglect service delivery during this time.

Property
owners, tenants and residents are urged to continue communicating any hotspot concerns with
their CID managers, who will in turn contact the appropriate COJ officials to
address the issues.

CID
contact details are listed on the CID Forum website www.cidforum.co.za

In the press: 

SAID Operations team collecting refuse in the Central Improvement District.