Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa on Thursday welcomed a decision by the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria to dismiss, with costs, the application brought by the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI) and Circuit Fitment.
The applicants had served an urgent application on the Minister and the Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa NPC (Redisa) on December 10, in which they sought a declaratory order that the Minister’s approval of Redisa’s Integrated Industry Waste Tyre Management Plan (IIWTMP) be set aside.
The application also called for the Minister to be interdicted and prohibited from proceeding with the implementation of Redisa’s IIWTMP.
Further, the applicants had filed a supplementary affidavit arguing that Redisa was not entitled to submit a plan as it was not a tyre producer.
In his ruling, acting High Court judge AJ Bam indicated that, in his view, the Minister’s approval of Redisa’s IIWTMP was well motivated and that there could be no doubt that the Minister was duty bound, in terms of the relevant legislation, to ensure that the Waste Tyre Management plan should proceed and be implemented.
“The court thus finds that the Minister acted within her powers when she withdrew the approval of the initial plan and, thereafter, approved another version of the plan in November,” Bam said.
Consequently, the implementation of the Redisa plan would proceed.
The Minister was particularly pleased that the implementation of the approved Redisa plan was proceeding so that both government and industry could focus on the management of waste tyres in South Africa.