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City residents to dump refuse in Hatcliffe
The Daily Mirror (Zimbabwe)
February 09, 2006

http://www.zimmirror.co.zw/daily/index.cfm?

HARARE City Council has set Saturday as the day for residents who can afford to dump domestic waste on their own to do so at Pomona dumpsite, Hatcliffe, following an outcry over the city's failure to collect refuse.

Those who can't afford, the city fathers said, have to wait until the council collects the garbage.

Heaps of garbage have become a common sight in the capital's suburbs since mid-last year prompting residents to opt to dump their own waste.

The municipality has failed to collect refuse because of a myriad of problems they cited including shortage of fuel and rundown trucks.

City spokesperson Madenyika Magwenjere said the move was adopted after some residents, irked by the continuous non-collection of refuse, requested for council permission to dump their rubbish at the city's dump sites.

"Residents who want to dump their domestic waste can do so every Saturday. We have reached this position after some of them called on us requesting permission to dump their refuse on their own. They would, however, still be required to pay the refuse collection fees as usual," he said.

"Our fleet is still depleted and we are operating with between 12 and 14 trucks a day. To carry out our duties normally we need over 60 trucks a day," he said.

"Of late, we have been managing to collect bins in some suburbs although we are yet to clear the heaps that have been accumulating in some open spaces."

Recently, the city embarked on a clean-up exercise that resulted in the closure of Mbare Musika wholesale market and the opening of satellites markets in Mabvuku, Highfield, Dzivaresekwa and Hatcliffe.

Harare is facing numerous service delivery problems that have seen residents going for days without water, uncollected garbage, poor street lighting and potholed roads and streets.

Council has attributed these problems to poor revenue due to sub-economic tariffs and rates it has been charging.

Meanwhile, numerous traffic lights in Harare's Central Business District (CBD) continue malfunctioning due to constant power cuts and mechanical failure.

City authorities have attributed the problem to electricity cuts, vandalism and shortages of spares. Our Bulawayo correspondent reports that the city has been experiencing problems with its street lighting switches due to the periodic electricity cuts.

It is estimated that it would cost the city billions of dollars to replace damaged equipment required to put the street lighting switching system on track.

The department of engineering services has proposed to spend more than $60 million to buy 120 gadgets commonly known as time switches.

"Residents will have noticed that some lights have been continuously on during daylight.

"This is not deliberate, but a result of faulty switching equipment," Peter Sibanda, Bulawayo's Engineering Services director, said.

"As a result, our technicians together with assistance from Zesa have to manually switch on and switch-off the lights," he said.

Sibanda said the city would buy the time switches as soon as council approved its budget.

About 120 switches are needed for the estimated 120 different circuits controlling streetlights across the city.

Zimbabwe's second largest city has an estimated 15 000 lights in the eastern areas of which 50 prrcent are working.

Bulawayo also has an additional 532 fully-equipped tower lights in the western suburbs while another 26 tower lights were recently erected but are still to be equipped.

Sibanda, however, assured city residents that council was attending to the problem as a matter of urgency.

Erratic supplies of material and fuel have hampered the city's engineering services, traffic control and the public lighting sections compromising service delivery. Bulawayo needs more than $520 million and nearly 1 000 litres of fuel to effectively implement its maintenance backlog action plan on street lighting.

Implementation of the plan was started on November 21 in 2003.

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