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Zimbabwe
town resorts to ox-drawn carts to remove garbage
ZimOnline
October
29, 2005
http://www.zimonline.co.za/headdetail.asp?ID=10915
HARARE – Zimbabwe
was this week thrown back into the dark ages when authorities in
the town of Shamva north-east of Harare started removing garbage
using donkey and ox-drawn carts as a crunch fuel crisis continues
to bite.
Zimbabwe has
experienced intermittent fuel shortages for the past six-years,
precipitated by the country’s worst economic crisis that has spawned
critical shortages of foreign currency needed to pay for oil imports.
The chief executive
officer of Shamva town council, Sydney Chiwara, said yesterday fuel
shortages had forced authorities to suspend the use of tractors
and trucks used to remove garbage from the town’s Nyaradzo residential
suburb.
Chiwara said
the latest move was the only available option for the council as
it battles to avert a health disaster.
"We have
been having a problem of diesel and this is a stop-gap measure which
we have taken to prevent a health hazard," he told ZimOnline
by phone from the district council about 90km from the capital Harare.
"We are
hoping that we will get diesel soon but in the meantime the donkey
and ox-drawn cart have come in handy. We do not have any other choice."
Donkey and ox-drawn
cart owners in the district have become instant millionaires as
the council pays up to keep the garbage off the street. But residents
of Nyaradzo complained on state television on Thursday that the
new transport system had its own shortcomings, such as donkey and
cattle dung strewn all over the suburb.
Fuel shortages
have resulted in urban suburbs going for weeks with uncollected
garbage, which health experts say will result in a serious health
crisis if it continues into the rainy season, expected to begin
anytime now.
In September,
Harare town clerk Nomusa Chideya told a parliamentary portfolio
committee that the city had been forced to purchase fuel on the
black market after failing to get allocation from the government.
Although other
officials have not publicly commented on where they are getting
fuel, most are getting it from the black market at no less than
$100 000 a litre to keep their vehicle fleet on the road.
But Shamva has
become the first council in the country to improvise using donkey
and ox-drawn carts to remove garbage, something that may have been
unthinkable to many Zimbabweans. - ZimOnline
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