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Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Harare City Council has blown $1,2 million hiring vehicles for refuse collection, an amount enough to buy at least 10 compactors duty free. Government issues duty-free certificates for such cases. Most of council’s compactors and skip trucks have developed major mechanical problems, resulting in many breakdowns and this has affected refuse collection.

Harare City Council has been failing to collect garbage for some time now, resulting in the outbreak of water-borne diseases in suburbs like Mbare.

Acting town clerk Mrs Josephine Ncube told councillors at a full council meeting on Tuesday that hiring trucks was not feasible.

This was after the councillors demanded that council should hire more trucks for garbage collection.

“Most of our refuse trucks are not functioning, but we expect the situation to improve as we are expecting the first batch of 17 compactors to be delivered next week. The money we are going to spent on hiring is enough to buy at least 10 compactors,” she said.

Harare last beefed up its fleet of refuse collection trucks in 2010.

It neglected servicing the fleet and it is grounded. Each truck is operating for an average of 18 hours every day.

Overworking the trucks led to frequent breakdowns. Residents are now forced to dump waste on street corners.

Government recently approved a request by Harare City Council to borrow $30 million to buy additional refuse trucks and equipment for road maintenance. Council has already purchased 30 trucks. Local Government, Public Works and National Housing Secretary Engineer George Mlilo said his ministry will assist councils in importing such vehicles.

“We can assist local authorities by giving them duty-free certificates so they can contain their costs,” he said.

According to the recent minutes of the Finance and Development Committee, finance director Mr Tendai Kwenda requested the approval of a supplementary revenue budget to finance hire of refuse collection fleet within the Central Business District and other Harare districts at an estimated cost of $1,2 million.

Council authorised the supplementary budget.