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Blessings Chidakwa, Herald Reporter
Harare City Council yesterday deployed 650 enumerators to conduct research and surveys across the city to provide data and opinion for a comprehensive master plan.
The move is a response to President Mnangagwa’s call to action with no compromise for a service blueprint. The President wants the standard of service delivery by local authorities to reflect an upper-middle income economy.
A master plan is an overall land use planning document, which constitutes policies and strategies regarding how land should be used and how developments should occur, looking at future water supplies, road networks, solid waste and waste water management, housing provision, environmental management and improvement of transport and telecommunications.
It ties a local authority’s budget with service delivery.
The City of Harare master plan is being rolled out by Development Studio Africa (Pvt) Ltd in partnership with Surbana Jurong Infrastructure of Singapore, who did the Kigali Masterplan in Rwanda.
The first draft is expected to be presented before the council for adoption and subsequently submitted to the Government before the end of January next year.
Speaking at the official deployment of enumerators yesterday, Harare master plan project lead consultant Mr Trymore Muderere said the enumerators would first undertake traffic counts to inform the traffic and transport thematic issue of the master plan.
“Today, we are deploying for the thematic issue of traffic and transport. We did convene a deployment launch this morning at 5am and we deployed enumerators to 50 major traffic nodes across the City of Harare signifying major traffic points and major entry points into the city for regional traffic as first-level entry nodes and second-tier nodes which include the major district distributor points and pressure points within neighbourhoods.”
“Our thematic head for traffic and transportation has stratified major nodes to 50 points and we have deployed a total of 650 research assistants or what we call traffic enumerators,” he said.
The latest exercise is part of the city’s efforts to gather empirical information that will inform the development of the master plan.
“These traffic enumerators will be counting traffic from 6am to 8pm. Then they have segments, say from 6am to 8am, this is the morning peak, then mid-morning 10am to 12pm, then 12pm to 2pm, which can essentially be a peak point as well. Then 2 pm to 4 pm, 4 pm to 6 pm and 6pm to 8pm. So, we have an evening peak from 4pm to 6pm, sometimes up to 8pm, which we are trying to establish.
“These surveys will run from Thursday, Friday to Saturday under a stratified sampling protocol that we have adopted.
“We cannot count for all the days of the week, but the standard practice is that if we select specific days which are representative of the character of the week it suffices to establish the level of service or congestion or traffic friction.”
Mr Muderere said the very same enumerators shall be deployed to residential and commercial areas to collect data which is crucial in master planning such as opinions on issues related to service delivery and residents’ vision of what an ideal city should be like.
“We will also do another survey at shopping centres to assess the level of strength of our shopping centres and required improvements.
“We will also do another survey for industrial districts so that we understand the level of production and level of occupancy in those districts and functionality as well as their space requirements.”
Mr Muderere said they were expecting to complete the data collection process by December 6 and move to the next stage.
“We estimate that by the 28th of January 2024, the draft master plan will be presented before the council for adoption as prescribed in terms of the law.
“We also estimate that by January 30 2025, the Minister of Local Government and Public Works will have been notified of the City of Harare City Council’s decision to adopt the draft master plan as required by the law assuming that consultations with the Ministry’s department of spatial planning and development have been conclusive and that residents and sectoral stakeholders have been consulted.”
Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume said he was pleased that the consultant was now finally on the ground.
“This new master plan is a legacy milestone for us as City of Harare and it is important that it’s done and completed expeditiously,” he said. The Presidential call for action and the legal requirements meant Harare the work should be completed in the shortest possible time.
Harare City Council is the only council in the country yet to submit a draft master plan to Government. The other 91 urban and rural district councils all met the mid-year deadline.
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