adminGeorge Maponga Masvingo Bureau
A health time bomb is ticking in Masvingo City, as the council is battling to collect garbage after its entire refuse fleet got grounded.
The country’s oldest town used to be serviced by three refuse collection trucks which have all broken down, resulting in garbage piling up across most suburbs.
Council is now reportedly mulling plans to outsource garbage collection to ease the problem. Deputy mayor Councillor Wellington Mahwende said an emergency council meeting was on the cards to find ways of arresting the situation.
He attributed failure to collect refuse to breakdown of council trucks.
“We are going to hold an emergency council meeting to deliberate on the issue of non-collection of refuse following the breakdown of our refuse collection fleet,” he said.
“There are several options on the table that we will consider to deal with the problem of refuse top of which is to hire private players to temporarily help with garbage collection.”
Clr Mahwende assured residents that a permanent solution to the refuse problem will soon be found and called for patience.
Council sources cited an acute shortage of hard currency to procure critical spare parts for frustrating efforts to repair the grounded refuse fleet.
Masvingo city used to rely on one truck to collect refuse before its fleet was beefed up with two new trucks.
At one point council even outsourced refuse collection to avert a health disaster in the city after garbage went uncollected for months.
Online Reporter