Day: June 10, 2022

The City of Cape Town is happy to announce that the Solid Waste By-law Enforcement Unit has issued a total of 1 405 fines this year, with a total value of R1,3 million. With better cooperation from residents, however, we can do so much more.

The Urban Waste Management Directorate’s Solid Waste By-law Enforcement Unit deals specifically with contraventions of the Integrated Waste Management By-law. Its main focus areas are littering, dumping, and ensuring that businesses have waste management plans in place. The unit also assists with awareness and education in communities where dumping has become endemic.

There is however potential to do more if residents can work more closely with the City to apprehend those who are degrading our communities. Applying penalties for littering/dumping relies on evidence, which can be tricky unless you catch the offence in progress. The City cannot have eyes on every street corner, but if residents can help us by recording evidence (i.e. taking pictures/videos) we can ensure that the guilty parties face consequences.

The penalties for illegal dumping include fines ranging from R500 to R5 000, or impoundment of the vehicle involved. If a vehicle is impounded due to dumping there is a fee of R9 158.10 to release it.

Apart from responding to resident complaints/reports, officers perform random inspections at dumping hotspots and in CBD areas. Spot checks are also done at businesses to ensure contracts are in place for waste management. Officers are deployed seven days per week.

‘I want to encourage communities that are struggling with illegal dumping to please work with the City’s Solid Waste By-Law Enforcement Unit to address this problem. This year over R300 million from City resources was allocated to clear illegal dumping. This money could be used for something more constructive if people rather made use of drop-off sites.

‘Illegal dumping can depress property values and attract crime and grime to an area. Don’t let those who use your community as a dumping ground get away with it. Please take pictures and submit them via the contact details below so we can ensure the guilty parties think twice before dumping again,’ said Mayoral Committee Member for Urban Waste Management, Alderman Grant Twigg.

Residents are reminded that there is a network of drop-off sites throughout the City where vehicles with a carrying capacity of less than 1,5 tonnes can drop up to three loads of builders’ rubble per day for free. There is also a reliable weekly refuse collection service operating throughout the City, except for unregistered/unrecognised informal settlements that have been established during the ongoing spate of land invasions. Settlements must be registered by Human Settlements before budget can be assigned for services.

To report illegal dumping, if you have the culprit's vehicle registration number and/or can identify him/her please contact the following channels.

Source: City of Cape Town

NEW DELHI — In Colombo, Sri Lanka’s capital, a sprawling port city showcased as a financial hub to rival Dubai is being set up on 269 hectares of land dredged from the sea. It is the latest of the huge Chinese-funded infrastructure projects in the island country that include a port and an airport in Hambantota.

The projects are under scrutiny, though, as an unprecedented economic crisis leaves Sri Lanka with virtually no foreign exchange reserves for fuel and food, or to repay foreign loans.

They were billed as economic game changers but have yielded few returns, say analysts.

“For example, the airport in Hambantota is called the emptiest airport in the world because it really is not attracting the business it should be attracting,” Bhavani Fonseka at the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo, told VOA via Skype.

Similarly, the Hambantota port has failed to generate much revenue while a convention center close by remains largely shuttered. “So, there are lot of questions on whether these kind of projects have also contributed to Sri Lanka’s increasing debt,” Fonseka said.

About 10% of Sri Lanka’s $51 billion foreign debt is owed to China. Even before spiraling into a financial crisis this year, the country was struggling to repay some of the loans to Chinese companies.

In 2017, the government handed the Hambantota port over to a Chinese firm on a 99-year lease after it could not pay off the $1.4 billion debt. The deal had sparked concerns in neighboring India that Beijing had secured a strategic berth in the Indian Ocean.

China’s influence in Sri Lanka has grown exponentially in the last 15 years as President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, who stepped down as prime minster last month, became a dominant force in Sri Lankan politics. Many of the projects such as the Hambantota port and airport were sanctioned in their hometown. While critics have slammed them as “white elephant” projects, they also blame the two for sanctioning them.

The economic crisis has now triggered a massive backlash against the Rajapaksas. Public fury forced Mahinda Rajapaksa to resign his post last month and the president has resisted calls to resign, but cries of “Gota Go Home” continue to ring loudly in Colombo’s streets.

“The Rajapaksas are seen as very much tilting towards China,” Fonseka said. “But I think now there is going to be a more balanced foreign policy and efforts to get assistance from more different and diverse actors.”

That is good news for India, for whom Chinese presence close to its shores had become a strategic headache.

New Delhi now hopes to recover some of the ground it lost to China in the country on its southern tip. Since January, it has committed about $3 billion in loans, credit lines and currency swaps to Colombo to import essential commodities. India has also shipped food, fuel and medical supplies to the country to ease hardships caused by the massive shortages of essential commodities that have led to hours-long power cuts, long lines for fuel and runaway inflation.

For the rice-sowing season in Sri Lanka, it plans to send fertilizer to help farmers, who suffered massive crop losses last year as the government ordered an abrupt switch to switch to organic farming. The ban on chemical fertilizers has since been lifted.

“The economic crisis was seen as an opportunity to demonstrate New Delhi’s commitment as a net security provider in an economic sense and to show that India as a regional power could support Sri Lanka in a time of crisis,” according to Harsh Pant, head of Strategic Studies Program at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

“That has helped underscore India’s credentials as a responsible regional power,” he said.

India is also supporting Sri Lanka’s bid to get a bailout from the International Monetary Fund and asked Japan to assist the country at a recent summit of the Quad -- the group including India, Japan, the United States, and Australia, that aims to contain China’s growing power in the Indo-Pacific region.

As New Delhi emerges as one of Sri Lanka’s largest providers of aid, its image as a “dependable ally” is being reinforced, according to Fonseka.

“The fact that India has come through in terms of addressing urgent humanitarian needs is very welcome by many Sri Lankans and many are realizing that India is a true friend,” she said.

China has praised India for helping Colombo and said that it is willing to work with India and others to help Sri Lanka and other countries facing difficulties.

The comment from its foreign ministry came after President Rajapaksa in an interview with Bloomberg this week said that South Asian countries in financial trouble are not getting the same attention from Beijing as before and that China appears to be shifting its strategic focus toward Southeast Asia and Africa.

Rajapaksa said that Sri Lanka could not tap a $1.5 billion credit line from Beijing and has yet to hear back on its request for a $1 billion loan to buy essential goods.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, however told a press briefing on Wednesday that “we have been doing our utmost to provide assistance for the socioeconomic development of that country” and that the “priority for China’s diplomacy lies in China’s neighboring countries, including South Asian countries.”

There is however concern in Colombo whether Beijing will be willing to restructure its loan as it negotiates a bailout with the International Monetary Fund.

While Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown is blamed on a host of factors including mismanagement, pandemic tourism declines, and populist tax breaks, Chinese projects' role in draining public finances while doing little to boost its economy is getting attention in other South Asian nations.

Desperately needing to modernize their creaky infrastructure, many small Asian countries, such as Nepal, have signed on to China’s Belt and Road initiative despite criticism from countries such as India and the United States, who call it “debt trap diplomacy.”

But analysts say unless these small countries find other financing options, China will continue to establish partnerships with them.

“It is also important for other powers such as Western countries or Japan to offer credible alternatives to these countries, because the debate on the viability of Chinese-funded projects may happen, but if they don’t see any alternative, they will go back to China,” Pant said.

Source: Voice of America

India's surprise decision to ban wheat exports has raised concerns about potential curbs on rice exports as well, prompting rice traders to step up purchases and place atypical orders for longer-dated deliveries.

Government and trade officials have said India, the world's biggest exporter of rice, does not plan to curb shipments for now, as local prices remain low and state warehouses hold ample supplies.

That's a relief for import-dependent countries already grappling with surging food costs, but most of India's rice growing season lies ahead and any change in prospects for the harvest could alter its stance on exports of the staple grain.

Monsoon rains determine the size of India's rice crop, and plentiful rains this year would help it maintain its preeminent position in the global rice trade.

Patchy monsoon rains, however, would stunt the crop and cut yields and that might lead to a drawdown in state inventories that would trigger export curbs to ensure sufficient supplies for the country's 1.4 billion people.

Why is India so crucial for global rice supplies?

India's rice exports touched a record 21.5 million tonnes in 2021, more than the combined shipments of the world's next four biggest exporters of the grain: Thailand, Vietnam, Pakistan and the United States.

India, the world's biggest rice consumer after China, has a market share of more than 40% of the global rice trade.

High domestic stocks and low local prices allowed India to offer rice at deep discounts over the past two years, helping poorer nations, many in Asia and Africa, grapple with soaring wheat prices.

India exports rice to more than 150 countries, and any reduction in its shipments would fuel food inflation. The grain is a staple for more than 3 billion people, and when India banned exports in 2007, global prices shot to new peaks.

Who will suffer the most if India restricts rice exports?

Any move to restrict exports from India would hit almost every rice importing country. It would also allow rival suppliers Thailand and Vietnam to raise prices that are already more than 30% above Indian shipments.

Other than serving Asian buyers like China, Nepal, Bangladesh and the Philippines, India supplies rice to countries such as Togo, Benin, Senegal and Cameroon.

What's the role of India's monsoon?

India's summer-sown rice accounts for more than 85% of the country's annual production, which jumped to a record 129.66 million tonnes in the crop year to June 2022.

Millions of farmers start planting summer rice in June, when the monsoon lashes India. The monsoon, which delivers about 70% of India's annual rainfall, is crucial for water-thirsty rice.

Indian farmers rely on monsoon rains to water half of the country's farmland that lacks irrigation. In 2022, India is forecast to receive an average amount of rainfall. But since June 1, when the four-month monsoon season began, rains are 41% below average.

The rains are expected pick up by mid-June and spur the sowing of rice. Three years of average or above-average rains, and new, modern farming practices have ramped-up rice output.

Should the government worry about rice supplies?

India at present has more than sufficient stocks of rice, and local prices are lower than the state-set prices at which the government buys paddy rice from farmers.

Rice export prices are also trading near the lowest in more than five years.

Meanwhile, milled and paddy rice stocks at government granaries of 57.82 million tonnes are more than quadruple a target of 13.54 million tonnes.

Unlike for wheat, India did not see a surge in rice exports after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February, as the Black Sea region is not a major producer or consumer of rice.

Source: Voice of America