Surrounding towns to deliver waste to Geo Pomona

Wallace Ruzvidzo-Herald Reporter

Harare City Council (HCC) is working on modalities which will see waste in surrounding towns including Chitungwiza, Ruwa, Norton, Goromonzi and Epworth being taken to Geo Pomona Waste Management on the northern outskirts of the capital for processing.

This was revealed yesterday by Harare Mayor, Councillor Jacob Mafume, during a tour of the dumpsite by Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee.

In an interview on the sidelines of the tour, Clr Mafume said HCC was seized with the matter as waste management was a pertinent issue.

“What we need to do is to come up with a working arrangement on how to transfer waste from the rest of Harare to this point. There is a lot of litter which should not be there.

“There are surrounding towns like Chitungwiza, Ruwa, Norton, Goromonzi and Epworth, which should deliver waste here,” he said.

Clr Mafume said budgetary processes were already underway to ensure timeous implementation of the initiative.

“We will be looking at how we can address that situation. We are currently doing a budgetary process, so we will sit down with the Government to come up with a solution.

“As you know, President Mnangagwa once declared waste management a state of disaster and a taskforce was put up by the Ministry (of Local Government) and it is a thing that we are actively engaged in,” he said. Committee chairman Mr Chalton Hwende said the they  had noted progress at the former eyesore.

“There is some positive developments in the progress on the facilities that Geo Pomona has promised and we think judging from the development that we have seen here they will be able to possibly meet their deadlines within the five years that they have agreed with the City of Harare.

“But our brief is to pursue issues that were raised by the Auditor General. So that is the reason why we are here today,” he said. Geo Pomona executive chairman and chief executive Dr Dilesh Nguwaya said the waste management firm was ahead of schedule in terms of agreed timelines with HCC.

“For hazardous waste we created landfills where people are coming to dump, but there are different charges.

“As Geo Pomona, we are ahead of schedule in terms of the timelines we gave the City of Harare, so what is left now is to construct the waste to energy plant but everything is on course and we are aligned,” he said.