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Columbus Mabika Herald Reporter
Chitungwiza residents have slammed the municipality for failure to improve service delivery in the town despite collecting revenue from ratepayers.

This comes after Chitungwiza Town Council admitted in a presentation last week to failure to meet the required standards in service delivery. Residents complained that council was failing to provide water, street lighting and a good road network, among many other essential services.

“I don’t understand why most residents are being charged for sewage disposal yet they are not connected to the sewer line,” said Chitungwiza Residents Trust director Ms Alice Kuvheya.

“For more than 40 years, residents have been paying for that service and the budget is always rising yearly yet there has not been meaningful development.”

Ms Kuvheya said councillors were only concentrating on land sales, most of which were not above board.

“We voted them into office, but they cannot even bring feedback to the residents. All they think about are land deals,” she said.

Commenting on Chitungwiza’s state of affairs in the presence of Harare Provincial Development Coordinator Mr Tafadzwa Muguti last week, acting town clerk Mrs Evangelista Machona said the problems the city was facing were growing each day because of the increasing population.

She said water supply had continued to be a big challenge.

“Chitungwiza gets its water from the City of Harare. Currently, we are receiving 6 percent of our total requirement which stands at 30 mega litres against a demand of 490 mega litres per week, which is not even enough for a single location. As a mitigatory measure, the municipality has 244 boreholes of which 144 are council owned,” she said

On roads, she said limited funding had been the major constraint, adding that only 3 percent of council roads were tarred.

“Our road network is aged and in poor condition. It needs total rehabilitation. Chitungwiza has a total road network of 640km of which 18km are tarred with the rest being earth and gravel roads.  Funding problems on roads have been worsened by the removal of the vehicle licensing role from local authorities while we also need to acquire adequate road equipment to improve road maintenance,” said Mrs Machona.