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THE decision by the Harare City Council legalising hand and animal-drawn carts on the city’s streets at a time the council is failing to restore order and cleanliness in the capital is ill-informed and makes us begin to doubt if we have the right people in office at Town House. Already the city is burdened with the problem of street vendors who have made the streets and pavements their workstations, creating havoc and disorder. Conductingbusiness in the capital has become a nightmare for many because of the enormous human traffic, coupled with huge vehicular volume. These have caused some people to move their business offices outside the Central Business District.

As if the problem at hand is not huge enough, the Harare City Council, in its wisdom, but obviously lack of it, decided to allow operators of handcarts and animal drawn carts to operate freely in the capital upon payment of one year renewable licence fees.

It is difficult to walk and drive in the streets of Harare because of the vendors and illegal taxi operators, popularly known as “mushikashika.” Street vendors and mushikashikas have turned the capital into a jungle and made life very difficult for council to restore it to its Sunshine City status.

We would have thought that council would first deal with the problem at hand — street vendors and the “mushikashikas” — before passing a decision on animal drawn carts. The city is dirty because the MDC-T council has failed to take action against the street vendors and the “mushikashikas” who have been allowed to do as they wish in the process making the capital an eyesore.These are matters the council should be seized with at the moment to ensure street vendors are removed from the streets and pavements and that the “mushikashikas” are brought to book. We do not need to remind the city fathers that the city we are talking about is the capital city. It is not just any other city, but the face of Zimbabwe.

We do not need street vendors and illegal taxi operators in the capital. We do not need by-laws that allow the free movement of handcarts and animal-drawn carts in the capital for whatever reason.

We do not need animals pulling carts in the city centre.

The council has massive problems owing to illegal taxis and street vendors and we fail to reconcile the fact that it now needs to add more woes for itself by making ill-informed decisions.

We strongly think that executives at council need to be serious. On one hand they tell us they want Harare to become a world class city by 2025 and on the other hand they make the movement of animal-drawn carts in the city legal. There is no way we can attain the world class city status when people at Town House who make such uninformed decisions.

Instead of moving the city to the future, the MDC-T council want to move backwards.

You can imagine the confusion that Harare would become with street vendors, illegal taxi operators, handcarts and animal-drawn carts. We cannot allow council to make the city free-for-all. It cannot be a “bambazonke” city, but we should all strive to make it a city that, on its own, can help Government in its efforts to attract investors.

Council must desist from playing to the gallery, trying to be populist yet doing more harm than good to the city. It appears the attraction for extra money to replenish the coffers stood in the way of rational thinking. We cannot sacrifice the city just for the extra money that would be paid in fees for the free movement of handcarts and animal-drawn carts. We must be much more serious than that.