Suburban
Government has provided $438 million towards the recapitalisation of Harare’s waste management equipment.
Diana Nherera Suburban Reporter
Addressing journalists on Monday this week, Acting Harare Mayor, Councillor Musarurwa Stewart Mutizwa said the equipment includes a landfill compactor, a landfill dozer, an excavator, a front-end loader, 10 refuse compactors, three tipper trucks and 20 skip bins.
“Government has already come on board and provided us with $438 million towards recapitalisation of waste management equipment, various pieces of equipment that include a landfill compactor, a landfill dozer, excavator, front-end loader, 10 refuse compactors, three tipper trucks and 20 skip bins.
“These are at various stages of procurement,” he said.
Cllr Mutizwa said the 15 refuse compactors that have been held at the border for the past five years will arrive in a few weeks’ time following Government’s intervention.
“We recently found the money that was required to pay for duty and we are confident that in less than three weeks from now, they will be coming.
“Because from devolution funds, we have managed to secure the money to pay for the outstanding 15 trucks,” he said.
The Acting Mayor is also appealing for support from the corporate world and individuals so that they can assist in clearing garbage that has been left uncollected in order to prevent a health hazard in the capital.
Residents from the northern suburbs have been complaining about uncollected garbage.
In some areas, ratepayers have gone for months without collections and have had to hire private refuse companies.
“We are making a passionate appeal to corporates and individuals to come on board and assist the city to deal with the issue of uncollected garbage and help us maintain continuity.
“Our appeal extends to the beautification programme.
“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 city image.
“We can blame each other but that will not solve 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 where we are now,” said Cllr Mutizwa.
He said council is currently owed over $7,8 billion.
“If paid, this will go a long way in addressing the sticky service delivery areas.
“We have put in place mechanisms to recover the debt so that we can plough that money into service delivery. And in the same vein, we are also doing some ring-fencing of resources coming, like for refuse, we are also going to retain a percentage for maintenance and replacement of the fleet,” said Cllr Mutizwa.
He said while the city is operating with 20 percent of its garbage fleet, it is working on increasing its fleet to 75 percent in the next 30 days.
“We appeal to individuals and corporates to assist us in the interim to carry out a blitz to remove illegal dumps, repairing broken down equipment and recycling and re-use of waste.
“We are appealing to the corporates and individuals for assistance in carrying 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.
“The reason why we are calling the public to intervene is because we do not want to hire equipment but we would want to ask the corporates to assist us.
“Where there are trucks or tippers, please feel free to donate one not for the whole year but maybe for 30 days while we are servicing our own.
“We are working on reviving our broken down equipment.
“Currently we have eight out of 50 compactors,
“Three out of nine skip trucks and zero tippers at the moment, one out of two front-end loaders and zero dozers, zero landfill compactors and also zero mechanical sweepers and also zero skid steer and zero tractors.
“So it is our call whilst we are repairing all these other pieces of equipment now that we have received some money to fix the fleet but we can’t wait for that long without any action.
“Our appeal would be to get this equipment up and running in the shortest possible period, therefore we would like to ask those with the means to either repair or provide the 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 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,” said Cllr Mutizwa.
