(Last Updated on May 24, 2021 by ZIMDAILY EDITOR)
HARARE – The city of Harare Mayor, Clr Musarurwa Mutizwa has called on individuals, and corporates to join hands with the city fathers in dealing with issues of garbage collection.
addressing a press conference at the Town House, the mayor said
“Garbage is everyone’s child hence we need to put our heads together to tackle what is slowly becoming a bad spot on the Sunshine image of our City. We can blame each other but that will not resolve the matter. However, all customers need to play their part – with residents and corporates paying their bills. Failure to pay over the years has gotten us to where were are today,”said the mayor.
Read the full statement below;-
We have convened this press conference to update Harare residents on service delivery issues and to appeal to the corporate world and individuals with capacity and love for Harare to assist in our quest to improve service delivery.
We are making a passionate appeal to corporates and individuals to come on board and assist the city deal with the issue of uncollected garbage and help us to maintain continuity. Our appeal extends to the beautification programme. I will shortly speak on the beautification agenda and how corporates and individuals can participate.
Garbage is everyone’s child hence we need to put our heads together to tackle what is slowly becoming a bad spot on the Sunshine image of our City. We can blame each other but that will not resolve the matter. However, all customers need to play their part – with residents and corporates paying their bills. Failure to pay over the years has gotten us to where were are today. Council is owed over ZW7.8 billion – which if paid today would go a long way in addressing the sticking service delivery areas. We have put mechanisms to recover the debts so that we can plough that money into service delivery. Soon we are publicising names of huge debtors who are holding onto public funds – funds meant for service delivery. Services were provided and they did not pay. They are now holding the city at ransom.
But today we are not deliberating on the debt. We have a wish list which we want assistance with. We are currently operating with 20 percent of our garbage collection fleet. While we work on increasing our fleet availability to 75 percent within the next 30 days, we appeal to individuals and corporates to assist us in the interim to implement the following strategies.
- Assistance to carry out a blitz to remove illegal dumps through provision of pieces of equipment such as trucks, dumpers, front end loaders, dozers, tractors mounted with trailers and compactors etc.
- We are working on reviving our broken down equipment. Currently we have 8/50 compactors, 3/9 skip trucks, 0/5 tipper trucks, 1/2 front end loaders, 0/2 dozers, 0/1 landfill compactor, 0/2 mechanical sweepers, 0/1 skid steer and 0/2 tractors.
Our appeal would be to get this equipment running in the shortest possible period. Therefore, we would like to ask those with the means to either repair or provide spares or to approach the Mayor for a list of the broken down equipment and the required spares to revive the equipment. In this regard we also would like to ask communities with the capacity to come forward and adopt compactors and other equipment for repair and maintenance and use the same in their areas in the spirit of decentralisation. We take this opportunity to commend the Quinnington Residents association who are currently repairing a grader. - Our appeal also goes to corporates to assist in implementing programmes to recycle and reuse waste at source or community based initiatives. This is not based on corporate goodwill but corporate social responsibility to ensure that they take their products from the cradle to the grave. In other words it is their responsibility to ensure that they minimise environmental impact caused by their products, according to the above principle.
Our appeal is premised on the understanding that companies and institutions derive their business from the community and we therefore cannot allow the City to degenerate into a diseases hot spot that will eventually affect companies and individuals when people fall sick.
Government has already come on board and has provided us with ZWL$438 million towards recapitalisation of waste management equipment. Various pieces of equipment that include a landfill compactor, landfill dozer, excavator, front end loader, 10 refuse compactors, three tipper trucks and 20 skip bins are at various stages of procurement.
Linked to effective garbage collection is the City beautification programme.
Individuals and corporates have a big role to play starting with the frontage of our properties or businesses.
Our bylaws give authority to owners of buildings to maintain their frontage by also ensuring there are garbage receptacles, greening the frontage and installing adequate lighting.
Companies and individuals are encouraged to adopt pieces of land in the city specifically for beautification purposes. Terms and conditions can be discussed with our parks and cemeteries division under the Department of Housing.
In simple terms, the city is open on partnerships that benefit residents, council and the people rendering the assistance.
For grass cutting we require the following:
15 tractors, one trailer and 80 brush cutters to operate effectively.
