GEOGENIX BV, the company implementing the Pomona waste-to-energy project, says it will not be billing Harare residents directly for dumping waste at the dumpsite.
The Netherlands and Italian investor sealed a Euro 304 million deal with Harare City Council (HCC) in May that will see the transformation of the biggest waste facility in Harare into an energy plant that will generate 16 to 22 megawatts of electricity.
Responding to residents during a question and answer virtual meeting organised by the Zimbabwe National Organisation of Associations and Residents Trust (ZNOART), Geogenix operations and compliance manager Wadzanai Chigwa said the company did not have a mandate to make residents pay as its contract was with the city fathers.
“The contract that is there is between Geogenix and HCC, the issue of extending the bills to the residents is for the HCC to decide. We are not coming down to residents asking them to pay us, the HCC is the one that will be bringing the waste to us, and so if they decide to bill that on the residents it’s up to them.
“I’m not saying we don’t care about the residence, we are coming here because we feel that the Pomona dumpsite has become a problem for the residents, and we are here to assist residents by ensuring that Pomona is an environmentally friendly space.
“The contract we have with the council does not translate to residents having to pay more, HCC have so many streams of revenue collection and collection of waste is their mandate and we just came in to assist them in dealing with the waste,” Chigwa said.
She further explained to the residents that the project at Pomona was more than just a waste to energy project as “it is a waste management project, and there are more than three other projects that are going to be run at that site”.
“On top of the waste to energy project we are also going to have a wastewater treatment plant on the site.
“We are registered with the Environmental Management Agency (Ema) and their inspecting officers inspect our work at the site on a weekly basis,’’ Chigwa added.
During the course of the meeting, the Geogenix representative was requested to produce the names of the people that were involved in the signing of the Pomona deal, which she denied.
“The project was approved as a national project at government level, so at the end of the day it won’t be fair to point fingers on individuals saying it was this individual that awarded the contract to us.
“We have done a feasibility study on this project, and negotiations have been going on since 2019 between the HCC and the company, this information that is probably unknown to residents, it’s not a fly by night thing,” Chigwa explained.