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Nqobile Tshili, Chronicle Reporter
BULAWAYO City Council (BCC) has started an ambitious drive to keep the city clean under the theme iBulawayo ehlanzekileyo ayibuye.
BCC is in the process of lobbying Government to make littering fines more deterrent.
The city started the anti-littering initiative to restore Bulawayo to its past glory of being one of the cleanest cities in Africa.
Under the theme “iBulawayo ehlanzekileyo ayibuye” meaning a clean Bulawayo must be restored, council has increased the number of bins in the city while contracting more private garbage collectors.
Yesterday council employees and contracted individuals were clearing several littered streets and sanitary lanes.
BCC environment health superintendent Mr Nkanyiso Ndlovu said council has embarked on an ambitious drive to rid the city of litter.
“As BCC we have started several initiatives to make sure that the city becomes clean.
We have introduced Skip bins on various points along 5th Avenue, at Renkini Bus Terminus and areas near Egodini and these are areas that we know have a lot of people.
Once the Skip bin is full it will be emptied regardless of the time of the day.
This is part of the measures of encouraging residents to throw litter where it is supposed to be,” said Mr Ndlovu.
“We have also increased the number of vehicles that pick-up litter in the central business district through bringing the community garbage truckers which have been operating in residential areas to the city centre.”
He said for council to be successful in the agenda, it needs partners from the city’s stakeholders and Industry and Commerce Deputy Minister Raj Modi has already come on board providing a front-end loader and a tipper truck to collect garbage in the city centre.
Mr Ndlovu said council fully appreciates how challenging it will be to transform the minds of the city’s residents who are major contributors in terms of littering.
The council has already engaged vendors on the anti-littering agenda and held a meeting with them last Friday.
“We are also going to conduct public awareness using a hailer so that they understand the need to keep the city clean.
We are doing this campaign under the hashtag #iBulawayo ehlanzekileyo ayibuye.
This is done in realising the fact that we have previously came tops in terms of cleanliness in Sadc region and it is our contention that we can claim the former glory,” he said.
“While behaviour change does not occur overnight, we are in it for the long haul.
We are prepared to work with other stakeholders because we know that on our own, we will not be able to win this battle.
This requires that we work together as different stakeholders to get our city clean.”
Mr Ian Masina, a council cleansing officer said some residents were abusing the city’s bins by plastering them with private posters.
“We have so many refuse receptacles so let us use those refuse receptacles for their proper use.
There are those who abuse refuse receptacles to place posters on them.
While our refuse receptacle has imprinted messages that encourage keeping our city clean, some people put their posters on top of our messages which has nothing to do with encouraging the keeping of the city clean.
That behaviour is illegal and council will soon be charging those people,” said Mr Masina.
He said without residents coming on board it will be difficult for council to win the littering battle.
“We need to work together; we should not be littering. We should be proud of Bulawayo.
We must work towards ensuring that we don’t practice littering.
We must ensure that litter is thrown into bins.
The council has made serious strides in ensuring that it provides bins across the city.
If you see someone littering let us encourage each other to stop littering,” he said.
A private truck owner Mr Charity Ncube who has benefitted from the community refuse collection scheme said the anti-littering drive has also created employment for residents. — @nqotshili
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