Suburban
Residents of Greendale are complaining over the City of Harare refuse charges which they say are too high yet the local authority is not collecting garbage as often as it should.
Diana Nherera
Suburban Reporter
The residents said they received their council bills stating that they owed ZWL$1 035,88 but council is not collecting refuse on a regular basis.
The Greendale residents said the statements they received were for last month.
One of the affected residents said she did not receive her December statement and the city has not credited her for a payment she made online last month.
The affected Greendale resident stays at a block of 10 flats in the suburb meaning council gets more than RTGS10 000 on a monthly basis from each of those flat dwellers.
The residents complained that the council bills were too high as most of them have now resorted to sorting their own garbage and taking it for recycling.
According to the Greendale residents, refuse collection was not reliable as some weeks the waste collectors come to collect but sometimes they don’t even pitch up.
“The trouble with City of Harare is they are very unreliable. We used to have collections twice a week a few years back but everything is worse and worse now.
“For us, it should be alternate Tuesdays but that does not always work,” said a resident.
The Greendale residents said they cannot leave their refuse outside as some people go through it and make a mess of it in addition to the mess caused by dogs straying from their owners’ properties.
“They (the people) leave a mess for us to clean up. We have got over the dog problem by making a big metal bin but crows can still break the bags,” said a resident.
Some of the Greendale residents said they were paying US$10 a month or the equivalent in local currency to have their refuse collected by a private company.
Residents said the private company is reliable compared to the City of Harare waste department.
Greendale residents said the unfortunate part was that they were having to pay another company to collect garbage following the failure by council to collect the refuse.
An affected resident said she could not continue paying two people or companies to collect garbage every month.
“Can one legally opt out of paying for refuse collection through the City of Harare?
“If we have to pay anyway, guess we will have to try and nag them for better service,” said the resident.
