BULAWAYO City Council has ditched a refuse contractor and will buy their own compactor in an effort to save money, but this has seen the local authority facing challenges in collecting garbage.
PRIVILEGE SHOKO OWN CORRESPONDENT
This emerged at full council meeting at chambers on Wednesday, where Ward 19 councillor Clyton Zana said despite the local authority having stopped the private company from collecting refuse to save money to buy its own compactors, the plans had not been executed.
He said the money, which was meant to be saved through the process, was not being realised, creating a serious backlog in the collection of garbage from residential and commercial areas.
“We had to cut the contractors’ services, but the waste management’s services in the eastern suburbs are poor,” he said.
“The council thought that this would save money, but at the end, if this money is not being realised what are we supposed to do?”
The council had contracted a company with its own compactors, which was collecting refuse, but later councillors, at a full council meeting, agreed that the company must be stopped to save money.
Councillor Silas Chigora of Ward 4 said when they stopped the contractor the idea was to save money.
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“We believed that this was a cheaper process because contractors were taking a lot of money,” he said.
“We realised that if this money would be put aside, we would be able to buy our own trucks for use in collecting refuse in the city.”
Councillor Pilate Moyo of Ward 11 said there was a heap of refuse in his ward that needed collection.
He said this could have been as a result of council’s failure to collect refuse of shortage of refuse trucks.
“I am afraid my ward is one of the places where the Youth Games are to be held, but there is heap of refuse which is very embarrassing,” Moyo said.
Councillor James Sithole of Ward 7 agreed, highlighting that the money saved was not enough to purchase the refuse trucks.
“We are awaiting delivery of two refuse trucks, but the money saved is not enough to fund about six compactors,” he said.
“Residents billing and receipts are two things, we need to have other projects so as to fund that programme.”
Residents have often accused the city council of having an unreliable refuse collection schedule, with some wards going for a fortnight with uncollected rubbish, forcing residents to dump litter in undesignated areas.
The local authority recently re-launched the once defunct Keep Bulawayo Clean Committee under a new name, Bulawayo Solid Waste Improvement Platform, in an effort to restore the city’s status as one of the cleanest cities in the region.
