Punishing litterbugs will help make city tick again

decades ago visitors remarked on how clean and tidy Harare was. Anyone who has visited Namibia will know that a litter-free culture can be created in Africa,  drinkers are even expected to dump their bottle tops and smokers their butts in bins in cities there.
But for us to lick the problem several approaches must be followed. One was announced last week.
All shops must now have refuse bins and all kombis must have a bin on board. From Thursday shopkeepers and kombi operators without bins will be arrested.
We were startled over the assumption that there are shops without bins, but presumably the City of Harare and the Environmental Management Agency must know of some otherwise they would not be issuing dire warnings. The bins for kombis sound a good idea but we fear that most of these bins will remain empty unless further steps are taken to stop passengers using the windows to dump litter.
Which brings us to the second approach that is needed — to stop individuals dumping rubbish in the streets or through their car and bus windows.
The bins blitz should help reduce the piles of garbage in alleys and remove one excuse for street dumping from bus passengers, but will do nothing more to stop people throwing into the street or through windows banana peel, orange peel, apple cores, chip packets, empty take-away boxes, paper bags with pie crumbs, drink cans, till slips, cigarette boxes and everything else that litters our streets.
Thanks to those magnificent ladies employed by the city council who continuously sweep the city centre, much of this is collected as it is dumped. But the true horror of what goes on can be seen early every morning, around 6.30am, as these women hit the streets with their brooms and start cleaning up the mess. Obviously the police cannot arrest every single litterbug, they would be picking up half the population of the city every day. But a start could be made. As the word got around that arrest was possible more people would stop throwing their rubbish around and take it home or dump it in a public bin.
Which brings us to the third leg of the unified approach, the responsibilities of the city council.
There are some public litter bins in the city centre, but too few. More are needed and larger ones are needed. Private companies have done something to alleviate the near complete lack of municipal bins, but more must be done by the council, to provide its own and to work out ways for companies to help in return for advertising.
Again a stroll down any busy street in any Namibian town or city will show what is required, proper bins with hinged tops seem to be favoured there and many belong to businesses who use the front of the bins to advertise their goods and services. We also need such public litter bins in suburban shopping centres, bus terminuses and other places where people stand or sit and wait. Kombi drivers are going to need access to large skips at terminuses to dump the rubbish their on-board bins collect, otherwise they will just empty them in the streets when no one is looking.
At the same time the city council needs to empty these bins, and collect the garbage in the bins it is making shops buy. City director of amenities Mr Dombo Chibanda promised last week to collect city centre garbage daily and said he would roll out daily collections to the suburbs.
Well shopping centres might need daily collections, but quite honestly the rest of us would like, for a start, for Mr Chibanda to collect our rubbish at least once a week for houses and twice a week for flats.
We notice Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda was at the launch of the litter campaign last week. Vast swathes of the eastern suburbs, including we suspect Mr Masunda’s own street, have not had their garbage collected for two weeks now. Perhaps Mr Masunda could have a chat to Mr Chibanda on that before he gets more ambitious and stops collecting every day instead of not collecting once a week.
It is all very well, and an excellent idea, to make shops, bus operators and households to collect their garbage and store it properly until it is picked up, but the fourth leg of any campaign must see the city collecting that bagged and binned garbage regularly, perhaps on the same day each week, or the same time each day, that appears on its own advertisements.
But once all four legs are operational, not just the one announced last week, there is a good chance that we can restore Harare to the cleanliness it once enjoyed.