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Tichaona Zindoga Political Writer
Over the years, the Harare City Council has become synonymous with shocking levels of poor service delivery. The city is failing to regain its “Sunshine City” status and has had calamities that were connected to poor services. The council’s workers have been on strike following months of poor or no remuneration. However, top management has been earning very huge sums, according to a salary schedule that was leaked to the media this week.
The lower end management, including some who should be open and customer-friendly because of their brief in public relations but choose adverse relations and hostility, earn sums in the region of US$15 000.
The salaries will put to shame even earnings in more developed and efficient cities in the world.
Here is an expose of who earns what vis-a-vis service delivery:
Tendai Mahachi
If anything has gone wrong or is going wrong with the city, it is because of this man. He is the town clerk and in the Zimbabwean system where there are no executive mayors he is the CEO of the city. Throw all the muck at him. He leads a venal clique that cannibalises the city while starving even its own. He top earns his comrades with US$37 642 per month. He no doubt is in the know of what has been happening, including efforts at stone walling the production of a salary schedule as demanded by the mayor Bernard Manyenyeni who in the scheme of things is not very powerful and is new, anyway. The chamber secretary, Josphine Ncube pockets US$34 299; director of finance Cosmas Zvikaramba and treasurer Misheck Mubvumbi earn US$36 999 apiece. The director of human resources who oversees the pauperisation of the ordinary worker while fat grows thick on top management, gets US$36 999 for his troubles.
Dombo Chibanda
Chibanda is the director of Waste Management. He earns US$34 299. The Amenities Department that he heads is charged with contributing to a clean environment and vibrant economy for the City of Harare area through responsible solid waste management practices, recognising solid waste as a useful resource wherever possible.
Many will wonder what the jaw dropper of the salary is for when the city has been at its dirtiest to date. Refuse collection in the suburbs remains sporadic and the schedules are not followed to the letter. Every open space in Harare is a dumpsite, even in the CBD. While the council provides those big “skip” bins, they do not bother to pick them up on time and they end up overflowing and becoming a pool of mound of rubbish. One could readily think of Ayi Kwei Armah’s graphic depiction of similar filth both in the physical environment and the human environments, most pertinently the management.
Spaces that will give a ready testimony are on First Street Mall at the intersections with Speke Avenue and George Silundika Avenue — where we all thought it represented the best of the CBD.
There are not enough street and pavement bins to dissuade litter bugs.
Those street cleaners are diligent enough, but then they use palm branches instead of brooms! And the women are just a handful across the city, who do their perfunctory duties once in the morning.
One wonders just how many hard brooms would be purchased with Chibanda’s salary, or a reasonable portion of it.
Chritopher Zvobgo et al
Zvobgo the director of Water, his deputy Sithole Vumisai and a manager in the department, Kusangaya Godfrey chew up a combined US$66 807 every month. Zvobgo pockets one dollar short of US$37 000 at a time when the city faces huge challenges in executing its mandate of supplying potable water to Harare and the surrounding local authorities of Chitungwiza, Epworth, Ruwa and Norton town councils with a combined estimated total population of about 4,5 million people.
People go for days without water and some resort to unprotected sources that expose them to disease. The boreholes that were supplied by donors that include Unicef at the height of the cholera crisis in 2008 have been breaking down. They are woefully inadequate, too.
The city is guilty of responding slowly to faults and often treated water gushes from faulty connections.
Sewage flows freely in most parts of Harare, especially the high density suburbs where children of the poor and the poor of the poor get exposed to their waste.
Most public toilets in the CBD and high density areas have no tap water.
It takes ages for council to attend to these issues and the people revert to carving out canals and streams of effluent from their home fronts.
The likes of Zvobgo do not stay in these places such as Mbare, Highfield and Rugare, among others.
They have their boreholes and functioning sewerage far away from the madding crowd.
They seem to have an unlimited supply of water and when their boreholes run dry, they simply use fire tenders to ferry water to their homes.
Phillip M Pfukwa
You would want to beat up Philip Pfukwa (The Herald does not condone violence as a way of resolving disputes) especially if you happen to have had your car damaged on the poor roads in the city or you cannot access that high density “line” that you grew up in because your car won’t manoeuvre the treacherous roads. Pfukwa, based at Cleveland House in the CBD heads the multi-disciplinary engineering arm for the Municipality of Harare responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of the City’s infrastructure. It has four divisions namely:
Roads, Mechanical and Electrical Workshops, Property Development and Harare Quarry.
Many will lose sleep over the state of the roads. There are genuine fears that some of the roads are a complete write off and motorists now tend to use the sides of the road instead of the patchy and potholed designations.
For his troubles, Pfukwa proudly earns US$36 999, which would enable him to buy something close to a very decent four wheel drive that manoeuvres the stolid roads.
Justin Chivavaya
Chivavaya like many of his top colleagues, earns US$36 999, while his close lieutenant James Chiyangwa pockets some US$15 100. Their job is at the Department of Housing and Community Services where they are tasked with addressing residents’ needs in terms of financial management, housing provision and administration, social welfare, recreation, socio-economic development, city beautification, manpower utilisation and revenue collection.
Chivavaya can be good at revenue collection, as the city brief states, but like all of the top dogs, the same revenue gets to succour him more than the goose that lays the golden egg. The city has a massive housing backlog that some statistics put around two million. Housing co-operatives have taken the job of the city in housing provision.
Long grass, a hazard to both motorists and pedestrians blankets most roadsides in the city.
Libraries in most residential areas are not maintained, let alone recreational facilities that have been converted to other uses in some areas.
Harare has near zero beauty that is why we all cry for the city to return to the old Sunshine City status.
This city without significant, if any socio-economic plans, is actually home to a large informal trade sector that it has failed to leverage and regulate for the transformation of its residents. Nor will anybody seriously suggest that the city delivers on social welfare goals.
Prosper Chonzi
Health services in the city are at best mediocre with the city’s facilities such as clinics and its two hospitals ill-equipped and inadequate.
The lack of capacity led to the perversion of cholera in the city in 2008 and the resultant 4 000 deaths. For administering this mess the director of Health Services in the city, Prosper Chonzi is worth US$33 410.
This is upsetting and criminal.
The Harare Residents Trust has called on authorities to act.
It said in a statement: “The HRT calls on Dr Mischeck Sibanda, the secretary to the President and Cabinet and Minister Chombo to immediately suspend, pending dismissal Dr Mahachi from the helm of the City of Harare and save residents from being humiliated by these managers who make unilateral decisions to disconnect people’s water supplies, and force residents to be on exorbitant payment plans, while the 18 top managers in council gobble US$500 000 every month in salaries, excluding the huge allowances they pay each other.
“Service delivery in Harare remains in a sorry and deplorable state, and junior employees in grades 5-16 are suffering without much money and their salaries are delayed every month because the managers have to enjoy a good life at the expense of service delivery and the welfare of junior employees.”
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