dyton mupawaenda
Ivan Zhakata-Herald Reporter
THE Harare City Council should shoulder its share of blame for the cholera outbreak in the capital and should not apportion all responsibility for the public health crisis on vendors, a lobby group for vendors has said.
Vendors for Economic Development (Vendors4ED) national chairperson Cde Samora Chisvo said council had failed to guarantee minimum levels of sanitation in the city, resulting in recurrent outbreaks of diarrhoeal diseases.
The city council is preparing to launch a city-wide blitz to remove unlicenced vendors from the streets, ostensibly as a measure to curb the spread of cholera.
But Cde Chisvo said vendors were concerned by attempts by some groupings aligned to the opposition to politicise a public health emergency.
“We have noted that there are some groups that are trying to politicise this issue,” he said.
“We encourage all vendors not to be used as tools by political parties. The issue of cholera cannot be blamed on vendors only. Cholera is a hygiene disease and the issue of hygiene involves everyone, regardless of occupation.”
Cde Chisvo said it was unfair for city authorities to blame vendors for the cholera outbreak when council was failing to collect garbage and attend to sewer bursts.
Failure by the council to maintain basic hygiene in the city, he said, had gone on for too long and needed to be addressed to avoid future disease outbreaks.
“For council to blame vendors when they are failing to deliver on sanitation issues in the city is grossly unfair,” Cde Chisvo said.
“In fact, the biggest culprits in all this are the councillors. They need to attend to the issue of sanitation and poor service delivery.
“When there is no refuse collection, you will obviously have disease outbreaks. So, to solely blame vendors on the issue of cholera is wrong.”
He said there were plenty of buildings in Harare that were overcrowded.
“There are no sanitation facilities in these buildings and in some cases, there is no running water. Then you see everyone laying the blame on vendors,” said Cde Chisvo.
Cde Chisvo said Vendors4ED was engaging the Government to find an amicable solution to the problem.
“Admittedly, here and there we might have a few bad apples within our sector who may be culpable, but that does not make us all the culprits,” he said.
“We are entering the rainy season where some bad actors among us are known to use dirty water to cook maize for resale. We, however, encourage our vendors to ensure their workspaces are clean and to exercise the highest levels of personal hygiene.
“We are engaging the Ministry of Health; Local Government; the Ministry of SMEs and the City of Harare so that we come up with an amicable working solution where all stakeholders play their part. We do not want a situation where one stakeholder takes all the blame.”
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