|
Back to Index
Service
provision worsening in Harare- time to act against the council
Harare Residents
Trust (HRT)
May 22, 2009
The Harare Residents Trust (HRT) is deeply concerned
with the slow pace of improvement in the quality of services being
provided by the City of Harare. Residents still experience shortages
of water, refuse heaps continue to grow at road intersections, business
centres, bus termini and in residential lanes, and rates are still
beyond the reach of many, despite the 50 percent rates cut.
In Mbare,
the majority of the streets in Jorburg lines, east of Mhlanga Street
in Mbare National raw sewerage continue to flow unabated. Mushongandebvu
drive has become impassable. Even outside the flats next to the
council offices, sewerage flows without hindrance and refuse heaps
are visible. Several reports have been made to the District offices
at Remembrance and the excuse has been that they have no transport.
It is now more than a week since the sewerage pipes broke down.
A visit to Mbare's
Mupedzanhamo Flea Market and the vegetable market place would confirm
this situational analysis. Nearly 5 000 people frequent these places
every day. Any disease outbreak would be catastrophic. City workers
are either sabotaging the new council or their supervisors in the
public works department are unable to do what they are paid to do.
Rubbish heaps at the main gate to Mupedzanhamo are a potential source
of disease outbreaks.
The situation
is worse in Glen View 2, 3 and 8 where raw sewerage continue to
gush out, flowing along the roads. This represents failure to respect
the health of the citizens who deserve better from the council.
The City of Harare, the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare, and
the Ministry of Environmental and Natural Resources Management have
to combine their efforts to resolve this situation before Harare
experiences another deadly wave of a disease outbreak.
In terms of
Section 14 of Part II, dealing with Administration of the Public
Health Act (Chapter 15:09) the duties of local authorities are specified
as follows; "Every local authority shall take all lawful and
necessary precautions for the prevention of the occurrence, or for
dealing with the outbreak or prevalence, of any infectious or communicable
or contagious diseases, and shall exercise the powers and perform
the duties conferred or imposed on it by this Act or by any other
enactment.."
Subsection 2
(c) of the above section states clearly that the Ministry of health
and Child Welfare has a responsibility to advise and assist local
authorities in regard to matters affecting public health. The HRT
demands that the responsible minister and his ministry, including
the City of Harare should publicly explain their position on the
situation prevailing in the high density suburbs.
Not long ago
we had a devastating cholera outbreak that claimed thousands of
lives and yet we have not seen the urgency in rehabilitating the
broken down sewerage and water reticulation infrastructure. We expect
the City of Harare to expedite this process as a demonstration of
commitment to serve the citizens.
It is unfortunate
that we make these demands to a council that has yet to find its
feet in the face of economic, social and political hardships. The
HRT wants the council to prioritise the rehabilitation of broken
down sewer reticulation and water infrastructure, repair of roads
and street lighting, and refuse collection. We need this commitment
in deeds and not mere statements to appease residents. The councilors
have to justify why they continue to get allowances from our coffers.
We request them to come down to the people and explain the situation;
they must be telling the citizens why refuse continue to pile in
public places and sewerage continue to flow in our households. The
HRT demands accountability and transparency in the administration
of Our Harare.
* For comments
and feedback please contact us on hretrust79@gmail.com,
hretrust@yahoo.com
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
