NEWLY elected Harare Mayor, Councilor (Cllr) Jacob Mafume has hinted that the local authority is working on increasing the fleet of garbage collection vehicles in order to match the increasing demand for services.
By Michael Gwarisa
Speaking through the official City of Harare Facebook account, Cllr Mafume said the city was expanding and this has exerted pressure on the already dilapidated fleet which also needs revamping.
I do understand that we have some of our trucks stuck in South Africa due to the foreign currency issue. We will try to see whether that has improved so that the trucks can be brought into the country.
“We will look at increasing the fleet as you know the city is expanding and we need to increase the fleet so that in every ward, there is a truck that is dedicated to that particular ward. That will make it easier for garbage to be collected timeously and regularly,” said Cllr Mafume
He added that refuse collection should be a priority and would soon meet the department responsible to ensure they step up their efforts.
“We need to look at the resources that they require, I know we have had challenges with fuel in the past because fuel was being sold in foreign currency and was scarce.
“We are going to look at how to solve that particular issue. Once the issue has been solved, we should be having our trucks on the road picking up garbage where it has been accumulating. It is not necessary to have garbage in those places, we will sit down with the team to see to it that we push the garbage where it should be,” said Cllr Mafume.
Speaking on the Pomoma dumpsite which has of late been causing heavy air pollution due combustion at the center, Cllr Mafume said plans to decommission Pomona and developing another landfill where there even though he believes recycling waste would be cheaper than setting up another landfill.
“I am made to understand that there is plans to have a new landfill, a new landfill that will encompass even the sate light towns like Chitungwiza, Ruwa and so forth. There are plans from the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) but you must understand that a landfill is an expensive and a capital-intensive project.
