White corruption at it's finest! Going that extra mile for that extra buck at the expense of the community it is supposed to serve.

Many moons ago, every hospital had its own incinerator to deal with swabs etc and the state owned cremetoriums were used to despose of all excess waste. Now the state pays people who OBVIOUSLY don't have the facilities to handle this to do the job.

Ever heard of the US controlled World Bank and IMF Mommacyndi? You know, those nice people who lend countries money on condition they privatize services such as these, open their markets to be flooded by cheap agricultural products killing local agriculture, demanding wage reductions or subdued increases and many other "structural adjustments".

While I believe we are free of any continued IMF/World Bank restrictions already, I'm not so sure that the $2 Billion Tito took as a parting gift was from the condition free SDR's or whether it was conditional money. I just don't seem to be able to find that info anywhere.

It is clear that no in-depth study was done into this problem. The medical waste Embizo left DEAT with a false idea of what is going on. And that the person that made the first comment has zero knowledge of that what he tries to comment about.
In the meantime back at the range DEAT or Department of Water and Environmental Affairs as they are now called is 100% responsible for this mess.
There is not enough Incinerates that is permitted and licensed to handle the medical waste that is generated in the country. DEAT is living in a fantasy world. I asked DEAT to give me a list of approved and licensed medical waste incinerators because the company I worked for could not found 1 (one) legal incinerator in the Gauteng area. One incinerator’s permit was suspended due to non compliances. One state owned incinerator in Johannesburg has no permit. Their operators, issue a letter stating that there permit has been extended; this is not acceptable as DEAT is supposed to issuing this letter or permit.

We stop the removal of medical waste due to the fact that we could not dispose of it legally. Now if we experience the problem and Said company will have the same problem and if they stop removing it, the waste will stay at the Hospitals and the mess will create huge health problems at each hospital. DEAT closed down all the incinerators that used to be at each and every state hospital (because they don’t comply with legislation). They never approved enough new incinerators to cope with the demand in the last 14 Years. The EIA process, which is a good process, is also not helping as I wanted to import a fully compliant medical waste incinerator that can be used on multiple sites. Under the EIA process, I needed to apply for a permit for each site witch implies each and every hospital in the country. This makes it an imposable process under the EIA regulations. I had about 10 e-mails to DEAT and GDACE to assist in this regard with NO reply back from the 2 departments.

This problem came from 1995 since the EIA regulations were implemented and all non-complying State owned incinerators was closed down. This problem will keep on popping up till there are enough incinerators. If this goes to court the removal of medical waste can lead to a total standstill and this will be a big problem, the generators are the people that are going to sit with the problems not the waste companies.

Nov 30 2009 08:36:44 AM
Billy Hill

I have never heard of the IMF or the World Bank forcing a country to dump medical waste in brick factories.

This is an environmental issue not a manufacturing issue therefore it is supposed to be controlled or performed by the government. The disposal of waste from GOVERNMENT hospitals is the responsability of ......yip ..... government