Rumbidzai Ngwenya
HATFIELD residents yesterday made a beeline to Harare City Council district offices to dump garbage in protest over non-collection of bins by the local authority for months.
Speaking to the Daily News yesterday, Hatfield Residents Association (HRA) leader Shakie Mushambi said the move was meant to push the council to improve on service delivery.
“Hatfield residents have been going for months with garbage piling at their houses yet we pay rates to the council every month.
“The situation has gone out of hand and no matter how many times we have approached the council to solve the matter, things have just gotten worse.
“Instead of collecting rubbish once every week, they have actually graduated to collecting maybe just once a month and when they do come, we don’t even know they are coming. They just drive around and we are left with piles of rotten garbage,” Mushambi said.
Mushambi said the residents had been digging pits to control the garbage.
“After all we have been trying to do, the council continues to hike rates, and even threatens to take properties for those who owe them in rates. But really, how do you motivate residents to pay for a service they are not getting?
“We are saying that they should just collect rates for residential stands and forget about water, garbage or anything else. We receive nothing from them but they need our money and we don’t know for what.”
Residents said the city had been bemoaning lack of fuel to collect rubbish on scheduled time.
Contacted for a comment, HCC spokesperson Michael Chideme promised to improve on service delivery.
“We are aware of what is happening at Hatfield district office and we would not want something like that to repeat so we have taken our lesson and will aim to deliver to their expectations.
“We are also waiting for refuse collection trucks that we imported to make sure that we are equipped to collect garbage from the residents,” Chideme told the Daily News.