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Voices from the community
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
May 11, 2012

This week in Voices from the Community, we feature an open letter from our CHRA members in Eastlea directed to the Mayor of Harare objecting on the establishment of a business enterprise along Wheeler Avenue in Eastlea.

Open Letter to the Mayor of Harare

We, the residents of Wheeler Avenue, Eastlea, Harare, wish to register our strong objection to the granting of consent for the setting up of car sales or any other type of business along this road.

Previous experience has shown that areas zoned for car sales businesses along Robert Mugabe Road/Glenara Avenue are de-greened in order to create parking space. We do not want this environmental damage to happen again in our area. Trees are central to our existence and we know why they are important. We value most of the great natural beauty and the charm of the treed area than the current piece-meal planning. Let us build the environment, instead of destroying it.

Whatever the merits of that decision may have been at the time, conditions have since changed so much since then that is no longer relevant. Already, there are a lot of car sales in the area; we do not see the need for more! The hard practical truth, in our opinion (although we are not experts in traffic engineering or town planning), is that the zoning for car sales ignores the absolute necessity of widening this access road to the city centre. To serve the material increase in population in Harare, Goromonzi and Ruwa as well as traffic from the entire route (Mutare-Harare), Robert Mugabe Road now requires extra road space equivalent to a six-way freeway with separate levels of crossing traffic to remove congestion. The current developments will cause Robert Mugabe Road to remain at its present abnormally low width. The blossoming car sales in our area engender traffic problems. Public and private vehicles are now using the roads on both sides of Robert Mugabe Road which is supposed to be an arterial transportation route, to avoid congestion at the Chiremba road traffic lights.

At least your good offices should have had the courtesy of asking residents if they had any objections to the zoning of our neighbourhood for car sales or any other business. This raises questions about the professional conduct of business and accountability at the Harare City Council offices. We call upon those with the requisite expertise on environmental governance to cause the city fathers to reverse irrational decisions that have a negative impact on the environment, let alone a residential area.

We hope this matter merits serious consideration.

Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely

G. Dube
CHRA Member (Eastlea)

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