‘Give municipal cops arresting powers’

Freedom Mupanedemo Midlands Bureau
Outgoing town clerk for the City of Kwekwe Mr Emmanuel Ngwena Musara has urged local authorities to push for a law giving municipal police powers of arrest if they want to win the war against the chaos and lawlessness caused by urban vendors and touts.

Speaking during his farewell party at Kwekwe town house recently, Mr Musara ,who has been the boss at the town house for the last 21 years said municipal police were toothless without arresting powers.

Cities and towns would continue having problems with vendors and touts as long as municipal police have no arresting powers.
“I have been Town Clerk for the City of Kwekwe for the last 21 years and my experience tells me that as for long as our municipal police don’t have arresting powers, local authorities with continue to struggle to maintain order and cleanliness in our cities. We will continue to have this challenge of congestion and disease outbreaks because at the moment our municipal police are just toothless,” he said.

Mr Musara said it was his dream for all local authorities to come together and push to have a law that allows municipal police to arrest those who break city by-laws. He said he had been pushing for such a law during his tenure at Kwekwe City Council.

“We cannot always seek police assistance to enforce our by-laws. The police have other duties to perform than spending time at municipal offices,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr Musara urged Kwekwe City Council to come up with city by-laws that compel haulage trucks getting into the city centre to pay fees that will be used to repair the city’s roads.

He said Kwekwe City has the burden of repairing roads that were being destroyed by haulage trucks especially those that carry chrome ore to Zimasco.

“This is the biggest challenge that the city has at the moment. Haulage trucks that are coming in and out offloading and loading ore are destroying the city’s roads and they need constant repairs. There should be some fee that should be collected from these trucks towards repairing the roads,” he said.