Suburban
Residents of Ward 18 are frustrated by the City of Harare’s failure to come up with an efficient waste management strategy and its ever deteriorating capacity to deliver services.
Peter Tanyanyiwa Suburban Reporter
This week Ward 18 residents expressed their disappointment with the municipality over its failure to collect refuse from their households.
According to the residents, the inconsistency and inefficiency of what the city has coined the “onslaught on waste/refuse collection blitz” has not helped the situation as rubbish continues to pile at people’s houses.
Residents said a once off refuse collection exercise done a few weeks ago as part of the “blitz” throughout Harare including in Borrowdale and other northern suburbs had not achieved the desired result leaving them to live with heaps of garbage in their backyards.
This has tempted some residents to dump their uncollected garbage at the Borrowdale district office.
In a plea to residents of Ward 18 who are hitting back at council by dumping their garbage in front of the Borrowdale district office entrance which also leads to the local clinic, the vice chairperson of the Greystone Park Security Neighbourhood Watch Ms Ellen Dove encouraged residents not to dump their refuse outside the gates of the district office as it affects the whole community and paints a bad image.
“Realising that everyone is fed up with the lack of service from COH, namely refuse collection, may residents not dump their refuse outside the gate of the council offices. It is the Greystone Park residents who are left with the smell and unsightly mess on our curbs as we leave, drive home or go for runs and walks,” she said.
She pleaded with residents not to carry rubbish from other parts of the ward only to dump it in a neighbourhood that is in the vicinity of council offices. Ms Dove also urged residents to find other ways of expressing their disappointment with the local authority.
A Glen Lorne resident echoed Ms Dove’s sentiments and indicated that they are facing the same problem of rubbish from the entire community being dumped in other neighbourhoods.
Borrowdale Ratepayers and Residents Association chairperson Mr Robert Mutyasira concurred with the concerns of the residents on the Ward 18 residents WhatsApp platform and appealed for a new culture of waste management among residents.
“We can actually find value in the waste we are externalizing by managing it at source. Most of what we are throwing away can be put to use. Used PET, milk and juice containers can be used to create nurseries at home while biodegradable waste can be used for composts that are necessary for crop production in production in domestic gardens and ultimately guarantee food security for the home. This could eliminate the need to externalise about 70 percent of the waste created in our homes,” he said.
“Depending on how enterprising one is, money can be made from waste. At the moment expecting City of Harare to stretch beyond their current limited capacity is far-fetched so we have to try by all means possible to minimise our need for their refuse collection services.
“We are not absolving them from their responsibilities and mandate to residents but things are what they are. In the event that they resume normal service delivery the longevity of the refuse collection trucks can be extended as they will be taking away only the necessary waste that cannot be processed at home thus reducing their weekly mileage significantly,” said Mr Mutyasira.
Harare North Member of Parliament Mr Allan Markham told residents there might be a solution to the refuse problem with the possibility of three trucks coming to the constituency under a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the City of Harare and the BRRA.
“No timelines can be revealed as yet as a lot still depends on how quickly the local authority will go through their processes before they can release the truck to the residents,” he said.
He told residents that the process could take long and they might have to be patient.
Several other solutions to waste management were discussed with one resident seeking to know from the MP and Ward 18 Councillor Ian Makone, if there would be any rebates of the refuse collection charges if a community manages to organise private collection of their waste.
Mr Markham said the modalities and management of such an initiative would be far too cumbersome for implementation.
Another resident Ms JoAnn Ross suggested that if people were to pile up their recyclable waste, there are service providers who can pick it up for a fee.
“There are several locations in and outside the ward with waste processing plants to which residents can take their waste for disposal,” she said.
Other residents bemoaned the trouble they have to go through when they deliver their waste to the Pomona dump site. Residents said council is asking for a ridiculous amount for anyone to drop their garbage there.
