5.2 System of Waste Management Officers

The Waste Act has created a specialized system of officers charged with coordinating waste management matters at each level of government. The Waste Act provides for Waste Management Officers (WMOs) to be designated at national, provincial and municipal level. The Waste Act primarily envisages a coordination function for WMOs, although it leaves the precise determination of their functions to the NWMS and regulations to be issued by the Minister. The Waste Act states that WMOs must co-ordinate their activities with other waste management activities in the manner set out in the NWMS, or in terms of a notice published by the Minister in the Gazette.

The Department has developed a guideline for the appointment of WMOs, to further define the role, powers, profile and rank of the WMOs. At a national and provincial level, where actual delivery of services does not take place, the role of the WMOs is essentially regulatory and policy-making. The Waste Act does make provision for support to municipalities in respect of the execution of its delivery mandate. WMOs at provincial level are anticipated to play a proactive compliance role by ensuring that municipalities have the capacity to deliver the services that they are required to deliver.

However, at local level, where municipalities bear responsibility for direct waste service delivery, it becomes important to create a distinction between service delivery on the one hand and policy-making and regulatory functions on the other. It is proposed that the local WMOs should not be involved in the waste service delivery function, and that their role should be to ensure that norms and standards are adhered to by the municipality. Thus the designated WMO should ideally not be based in the division responsible for waste services, and may be best placed in the Municipal Manager’s office.

The rationale is to establish an ‘independent’ system of WMOs at each level of government charged with the responsibility of making sure that the standards are implemented. This regulatory role can be further clarified in terms of regulations issues in terms of the Waste Act. In particular, the regulations should specify the authority and powers of these officers, the requirement to firewall them from policy-making and service provision activities, and the provisions for communication and management arrangements that will enable these officers to establish an effective regulatory system at local government level across the country.

Other regulatory roles anticipated by the Waste Act include a provision assigning the National WMO and Provincial WMOs the right to request the appointment of waste management control officers by holders of waste management licenses (Section 58 (1)) and to require the preparation of waste impact reports when the waste management licenses are being reviewed in terms of (Section 66(2)).

The co-ordination of the activities of the system of WMOs is further described in Section 4.8 on Co-operative Governance.