Zimpapers Logo

Herald Correspondent

As local authorities are struggling to collect refuse in residential areas and business centres regularly, causing a menace to residents’ health, the Government has roped in the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) to start collecting refuse in Harare Metropolitan Province at a charge that will be billed to local authorities, an official has said.

The main local authorities under Harare Metropolitan Province are Harare City Council and Chitungwiza Town Council.

These will continue offering the same services to ratepayers and EMA will only intervene where necessary.

In an interview, Harare Provincial Development Coordinator (PDC) Mr Tafadzwa Muguti told The Herald yesterday that local authorities had dismally failed to collect refuse, causing many environmental hazards, hence the need to bring sanity into the                                                                                city.

“For a long time, local authorities have been giving excuses for failing to regularly collect refuse,” he said.

“Despite getting penalties from EMA, councils are failing to improve the collection of waste that is why we are engaging the agency to assist them in that regard while paying them for that service.”

Mr Muguti said the decision was made in agreement with the Minister of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry Mangaliso Ndlovu, and will become effective beginning of November.

Local authorities and the business community were given an ultimatum to clear all waste and dumpsites by October 31, failure to do so would result in EMA conducting the exercise.

“We gave a directive to all local authorities in the Harare Metropolitan Province and a deadline to ensure that they clear all dumpsites and garbage,” said Mr Muguti.

“The business community, especially those in the CBD were given the deadline to clean their workplaces.

“For example, at Five Avenue, there is a perennial dumpsite there and we need to deal with that for good.”

Mr Muguti said shops in CBD dumping litter within their vicinity will be penalised, especially the take-away outlets, who were not disposing of their waste, and others who were throwing litter in the alleys.

EMA spokesperson Mrs Amkela Sidange said it was within the Environmental Management Act to penalise local authorities that caused environmental hazards.

“The PDC (Mr Muguti) is using the Environmental Management Act , according to section 10, to undertake any works deemed necessary or desirable for the protection or management of the environment which appears to be in the public interest.

“When a responsible authority for a certain service has neglected to do the rightful thing, as an agency we prescribe necessary activities to correct that,” she said.

Mrs Sidange said the agency was working around a number of strategies to try and bring to normality the issues of waste management local authorities should implement.

She highlighted that there was inconsistency of waste collection by local authorities, which resulted in rampant illegal dumping and it was undesirable for the integrity of the environment.

“The local authorities that fail to conform to the prescribed measures, the agency will take corrective measures and redeem the cost associated from the local authorities, otherwise we want to make sure that local authorities clean up their environments so as to ensure that the citizenry is afforded the access of a clean environment,” said Mrs Sidange.

Residents have applauded the initiative, although they have called for local authorities to come up with sustainable solutions to safeguard the environment.

Harare Residents Trust director Mr Precious Shumba welcomed the development, but disagreed with councils paying fees to EMA for collecting refuse.

“It is reasonable for Government to be concerned about waste collection and engage EMA for their services, but the solution does not lie in transferring responsibilities from local authorities,” he said.

“EMA, being a government agency, their mandate is only to cooperate and collaborate, but no policy changes can happen without an amendment to the Environmental Management Act which created EMA, the agency.

“Local authorities have no obligation to pay EMA for refuse collection services. If EMA decides to collect uncollected garbage in communities, residents consider it as complementary interventions by the national government to assist local authorities.”

Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) programmes manager Ruben Akili said the cooperation of local councils and EMA was important, although councils should address the root cause of why they were failing to deliver the service to ratepayers.

“While this is a noble initiative to have this multi-sectorial approach, it is sustainable in the short term because EMA does not have enough capacity to offer such services continually,” he said.

“In the long term, priorities must be set right within local authorities because the waste collection will remain their responsibility.”

Mr Akili said the City of Harare should recover the 15 refuse trucks they bought in 2017 and were never delivered.