Chronicle Editor
THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) started the year on a high note declaring war on litter bugs while also engaging the Government to impose deterrent fines on offenders.
The local authority said they would arrest and fine residents found littering and engage the police to complement their efforts.
At the time, BCC was commended for the bold move to restore sanity as sections of the city centre had become an eyesore with areas such as Lobengula Street and 6th Avenue Extension, where vendors sell different wares, characterised by heaps of garbage emitting a foul smell.
The same was happening in different parts of the city.
Residents, reacting to BCC’s announcement, challenged the local authority to lead by example by timeously collecting refuse.
They said BCC had contributed to the problem by not collecting garbage on time and if that did not change, all efforts would come to naught.
Barely five months down the line, BCC faltered and its mission to restore sanity in the city crumbled.
Sanitary lanes in the city centre, designed to provide leeway for service vehicles such as delivery and garbage collection truck, once again are characterised by heaps of garbage.
Suburbs were not spared either as they endured the burden of uncollected garbage for over a month as BCC was operating with half of its refuse fleet.
Residents in some suburbs resorted to dumping garbage in undesignated places which became breeding grounds for diseases and vermin.
Early this month, Bulawayo Town Clerk Mr Christopher Dube acknowledged the garbage crisis saying out of their 14 refuse compactors, seven were on the road.
It is against this background that the council front end loaders collecting refuse along the city’s sanitary lanes while garbage trucks started moving around suburbs this week brought so much relief to residents.
The use of front-end loaders illustrate the gravity of the garbage crisis in the city as council employees had to block roads so that they could remove the garbage from the sanitary lanes.
Once again, the council has been, as raised by residents in January, exposed for lack of consistency in providing a critical service of collecting garbage in the city.
This poses many risks to the community which is already reeling from outbreaks of diseases like diarrhoea due to contaminated water from unattended burst sewer pipes.
Bulawayo will only achieve the cleanliness it was celebrated for years ago only when BCC puts its house in order and becomes consistent in providing services. It begins with them.
Online Reporter