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Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Harare City Councils’ Works Department is incapacitated and is failing to meet its refuse collection schedule and other service delivery initiatives due to a myriad of challenges ranging from shortage of manpower and poor fleet.

According to a report presented by director of Works Engineer Zvenyika Chawatama to the Environment Management Committee, the city was on average collecting 50 percent of the areas in Harare on schedule as per the city’s “Refuse Collection Schedule” due to poor fleet availability.

“Due to the poor fleet, a weekend blitz and afternoon shift programme has been instituted. However, the Department was still falling short of compliance to the schedule hence the creation of backlogs and illegal dumps,” read the latest minutes of the committee.

“The average fleet availability during the months of March, April and May was 20 trucks due to a high frequency of breakdowns during the above period which were provisionally attributed mainly to door-to-door collection, lack of implementation repair plan, poor state of roads and state of roads at tipping points at Pomona Dump site.”

The committee was told that access roads and tipping points at Pomona Dumpsite had been in a bad state as the contractors that had been engaged by the city stopped works due to non-payment.

It also heard that the daily management operations of onsite spreading of the disposed garbage, soil covering and compacting had been affected by the breakdown to the city’s dozer and landfill compactor.

“No tenders were flighted throughout the year 2017 and even in 2018 for tyres and a number of the fleet was down and or on road using worn out tyres. Staff shortages were mainly in the following areas, refuse compactor operators, street cleaners and public convenience cleaners,” read the minutes.

“The division was battling on even without adequate protective clothing for staff. The division is affected by lack of pushcarts, bins, brooms, gloves and stocking of critical spares. The division’s fleet spares were not adequately stocked.”

Eng Chawatama told the committee that payments to creditors for repairs and maintenance were erratic, hence there were a number of the division’s fleet which broke down in 2017 which were still not repaired.