Mutare City acquires equipment

SYDNEY SAIZE IN MUTARE

The Mutare City Council has acquired plant and equipment to enhance the quality of service to residents, a move which saves the local authority which has been hiring equipment, Business Times can report.

The local authority took delivery of a 15-tonne tipper and a 140-horsepower tractor worth US$65 000 and US$100 000 respectively from Croco Motors.

Mutare City Council acting town clerk, Antony Mutara said more plant and equipment would be procured before the end of the year.

Previously, Mutare City Council was outsourcing the plant and equipment, a move which was bleeding the council thousands of dollars in hard currency monthly.

“This is part of the recapitalisation programme targeted at re-tooling plant and equipment to address service delivery (issues) in general.

“Obviously more still needs to be done to do away with the hiring of such equipment that as council we have been doing in the past, by year end we should have acquired other equipment to keep up with the ever-growing demands of an expanding city,” Mutara said.

In addition to that, Mutara disclosed that the city council would need graders, refuse collection vehicles and compactors to deal with erratic collection of garbage in high density residential suburbs.

“Truly speaking we cannot say we need such and such a number of equipment, but we will keep on acquiring more as we go, but our plight is for the residents to pay up so that we do our part, which service delivery of exceptional proportions,’’ Mutara said as he took delivery of the tipper from Walter Sundayi, a Croco Motors Mutare representative.

He implored residents to pay their bills to enable the city to provide quality services as well as reequip its critical divisions.

Mutare council is owed over ZWL$400m in unpaid rates and supplementary charges by its more than 300 000 residents.

The local authority said residents’ failure to clear outstanding bills was compromising the local authority’s operations.

But residents’ pressure groups blame corruption and ineptitude at the civic centre.

‘’We have said it again and again that there are a lot of water leakages in the city that go unrepaired for years. In Sakubva clean pure water gushes out 24/7 for 365 days and is never attended to and we say we have a listening council?

‘’Recently they went to a jaunt in Masvingo on what they said was a strategic five year planning workshop where they paid each other handsomely sitting and out of town allowances leaving nearby venues that could have cost less.

We need seriousness at the council,’’ Dube Mthulisi Edson Dube of the United Mutare Residents and Ratepayers Trust told Business Times.

The council admitted it was losing more than half of its clean water through leakages and apportioned blame on the obsolete laid pipes which require a total overhaul.

Before his death earlier this year from Covid 19-related illness, then town clerk Joshua Maligwa revealed that close to 65% of pure water was going to waste owing to bursts and leakages, mostly in Sakubva high density residential suburb.

He then called for the installing of water meters for every family as a means of arresting clean water wastage.