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Blessings Chidakwa-Municipal Reporter
A filthy, stinking, eyesore city!
These are probably the humblest words to describe how the City of Harare now looks.
Contrary to the city’s ambitious vision of becoming a world-class city by 2025, Harare City Council is struggling to collect garbage on regular intervals, leading to the mushrooming of illegal dumpsites in various places.
Refuse is piling up in most parts of the once “Sunshine City”, including right in the Central Business District, at a very worrying rate.
The local authority has been battling to collect refuse for the past months citing a severe shortage of refuse trucks.
Litter is being dumped on street corners, open spaces and in sacred places like graveyards and at churches.
While politics is the order of the day at Town House, with the CCC crying out for committees to be reconstituted in clear defiance of the law and a Government directive emphasising the law, no one seems to care about service delivery.
Despite the millions being spent at workshops by the city councillors and officials – the city last week admitted that it was failing to secure a mere US$1 000 to repair some of its broken down refuse trucks.
CCC councillor Enock Mupamawonde, addressing a press conference at Town House, revealed that only eight refuse trucks were working out of 61 the city has.
Interestingly, top notch vehicles for senior management are always on the road and in case of any breakdown, they are fixed within hours.
That is the quality of leadership being exhibited at Town House by both the officials and the CCC councillors.
Of course, for obvious reasons, the bosses’ vehicles have to be on the road to make them travel safely to destinations they know best – workshops − splashing ratepayers’ money on trinkets. This is a story for another day, let us revert to the illegal dumpsites.
Our news crew recently exposed that even at the local authority’s backyard at the Remembrance Drive offices in Mbare, there is an illegal dumpsite, a clear sign the opposition is incapacitated to run the affairs of the city. At the offices, council security guards sit right next to the heap of stashed plastic bins, a drum, a tyre, among other litter scattered along the road heading to the offices.
Some furious residents have in fact resorted to dumping waste at council offices in various parts of the city.
Last month, Hatfield residents dumped waste at their District Council offices, which spent weeks uncollected, with officials going about with their business unfazed.
The irate residents dumped sacks of garbage, others emptied from car boots, wheelbarrows and pushcarts, in protest over failure by the opposition-led local authority to collect garbage.
For God’s sake, Harare is the capital city! It should be given the attention it deserves in terms of service delivery, as it is the face of the country.
But with the CCC in charge of the city affairs, it has been proved in the last 20 years that they do not have the capacity and intellectual acumen to restore the city to the status they found it in.
At Kamfinsa Shopping Centre in Greendale, ironically two men wearing orange council overalls were spotted a few months ago offloading two bins at an illegal dumpsite.
Also, the rubbish was being burnt, posing serious health and environmental hazards.
When the council officials resort to dumping litter on illegal dumpsites, who will stop the madness in the city.
High density areas are the worst affected, as residents are usually financially hamstrung to hire private garbage collectors, forcing many to resort to dumping garbage at illegal dumpsites which pose a serious health threat.
In Warren Park suburb, several illegal dumpsites are now a common feature, among them near 27th Crescent where illegal drug dealers are dumping containers of BronCleer syrup. A bus terminus in Warren Park has since been turned into a dumpsite due to the local authority’s failure to collect refuse.
The terminus situated at a place commonly known as Pabhawa is now an eyesore due to a heap of garbage, with some of the litter strewn all over the place.
A railway line in Mufakose is slowly turning into a dumpsite, with fears that litter will distract the movement of the Zupco passenger train if the illegal dumping is not stopped.
At the site, garbage was seen nearly spilling over onto the railway line around Mufakose 1 High School.
The dumped garbage stretches for about 20 metres with a high risk of expansion as fresh mounds of refuse continue to be dumped there.
Apart from residential areas, recreational spaces in Harare are also slowly being turned into illegal dumpsites as the city council struggles to collect refuse in both residential and commercial areas.
Most recreational facilities have been neglected, resulting in people dumping garbage at the idle facilities, including stadiums, grounds, parks and sports clubs.
Even secured facilities have not been spared as heaps of garbage have been dumped there.
Many high-density suburbs such as Mbare, Mufakose, Dzivaresekwa and Mabvuku have become an eyesore as almost every recreational facility and street corner has been turned into an illegal dumpsite.
While Harare city officials have made it a daily song to complain over shortage of refuse trucks, they have for the past five years failed to account for 15 trucks they bought and are yet to be delivered.
In 2017, Harare City Council bought refuse trucks from FAW which are reportedly still stuck in South Africa, amid allegations that the council failed to raise over US$2 million required for their delivery.
There are also conflicting figures on the money said to be required for delivery of the trucks, with the local authority claiming that US$3,3 million is needed, while the supplier insists US$2,4 million is all that is required.
The 15 trucks are part of the 30 compactors that were bought by the local authority from automotive manufacturer, FAW Group Corporation.
Online Reporter