By Lerato Ndlovu
The Harare City council’s failure to collect refuse in some parts of city for the past weeks has caused fear in the residents that they could become a ground for breeding water borne diseases and malaria due to the outset of heavy rains.
Garbage for nearly a month now has not been attended to pushing to the mushrooming of street corner dumpsites and unsafe littering points especially in the medium to high density areas. Also at the city’s major shopping centers, skip bins have become eyesores putting forward the risk of diseases to the public.
For some residents in areas such as Kuwadzana they no longer know what is safer as a water pipe which burst in January has not been attended to up to now with some residents resorting to go and draw water in the trenches that are near the area where the pipe burst is.
Rhodwell Bonzo a business owner stated that it is worrisome that the city council is not collecting refuse at a time that cleanliness is needed, considering the heavy rains that are pouring.
“The actions being portrayed by the Harare City Council are worrisome considering the amounts of rain that the country is receiving, and in exchange they do not collect refuse and also some pipes are blocked by the garbage as it will be washed away to the trenches that are relevant during this rainy season.
The maladministration seems so inappropriate worse when we see council trucks roaming around, fire brigade trucks collecting water from reservoirs near those sites and we wonder if they do not see that they are creating a health hazard” he said.
A Glen View resident Ms Sharon Mutesva said the City council is not collecting garbage now that it’s raining, I think the cholera and typhoid that once affected the country in the past years could resurface.
“The chances of cholera, typhoid and malaria outbreaks in Harare are high and worsened by the fact that rubbish is always lying around, when you look at the dumpsites you can see mosquitoes and notice that it’s the breeding ground being developed, flies have infested and those who stay near these dumpsites are no longer safe, and we all know how fast diseases can spread in such scenarios.
“The City Council has to act fast before we start having another outbreak worse at a time when the Government is fighting another pandemic, if its politics at play they should consider some of the innocent citizens that do not follow on politics,” she said.
She further appealed to the City Council to improve its services citing that if people get any form of infection as a result of its failure to deliver, clinics will fail to cater for them as they are short of resources “she said.
“The council should revise its priorities and focus on what matters most to the people while we are aware of the challenges the health fraternity is facing but it is important for people to be safe and prevent disease outbreak because they might not find anyone to assist them in the hospitals, with the fear of being wrongly labeled”.
This comes at a time when Harare City Council employees give a seven day notice to their employer over poor salaries and non-availability of personal protective equipment (PPE), among other grievances.
