Mutare fails to collect refuse for three weeks

SYDNEY SAIZE IN MUTARE

 

The Mutare City Council  has failed to collect refuse for the past three weeks in most residential suburbs, a ticking health time bomb for the more than 400 000 residents and ratepayers in the city, Business Times can report.

 

Mutare City Council spokesperson Spren Mutiwi

The local authority blames the breakdown of its  ageing refuse collection fleet.

“The council has over the past three weeks experienced a series of breakdowns of its refuse fleet a development which has resulted in the mushrooming of backlogs in various suburbs,” Spren Mutiwi, the Mutare City Council spokesperson said.

He added: ‘’The breakdown of compactors has affected the routine collection schedule. Currently, council is working flat out to repair its fleet and restore normalcy in solid waste management.”

Mutiwi appealed to residents and stakeholders to adopt ‘friendly environmental and solid waste practice and desist from dumping waste.’

However, the council has come under fire from the residents who accuse it of not prioritising their health and safety owing to the recent revelations that the local authority had set aside a ‘handsome’ golden handshake package for the late Town Clerk Joshua Maligwa.

Maligwa who died earlier this year from Covid-19 related illness is set to have his surviving spouse receive a top of the range SUV vehicle, residential and commercial stands, all believed to have been part of his working contract when he joined the eastern border city a couple of years ago from Rusape Town Council.

Mutare resident Elisha Musabayana told the Business Times that residents have no alternative means of disposing refuse which takes three weeks uncollected.

“The council should devise means of ensuring the refuse in mostly high residential suburbs is removed as it is piling up and exposing people to a likelihood of a disease outbreak,” said Musabayana from Hobhouse suburb in Mutare.

Perpetual Muringani from Sakubva moaned the mounting flies in the densely populated location and called on the council to at least spray the illegal dumpsites.

“We have seen a proliferation of some dumping zones that are illegal and at least the council should spray such sites as flies are now a nuisance in our neighbourhood. We urge that council to act swiftly against this looming health time bomb,’’Muringani said.

The Mutare City Council has at least three working and reliable refuse collection trucks with the rest having become obsolete.

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