by Bevan Musoko
It is very painful for people who have been affected by the cholera and typhoid outbreak to hear MDC Alliance leader, Nelson Chamisa and the newly installed Harare City Council (HCC) Mayor, Herbert Gomba playing politics with the outbreak by blaming ZANU PF and Government.
Chamisa toured Glen View 1 Clinic on Wednesday and claimed thereafter that Government took long to respond to the outbreak. He also claimed that Government was not assisting in fighting the epidemic.
Gomba claimed during a Government inter-agency meeting yesterday that Government had failed to provide reliable water to Harare residents.
Chamisa and Gomba are turning a blind eye to the fact that MDC-Alliance has been in charge of HCC since 2000, during which period its Councillors have not made any meaningful investments in its Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) infrastructure, despite a significant expansion of the urban population through mushrooming of urban settlements. HCC has an annual budget in excess of US$500 million.
Council priorities appear to be misplaced. HCC sponsors Harare City Football club, which gobbled around US$6 million between the 2016 and 2017 seasons. This is abuse of Council resources against the background that in 2017, Council admitted that it was losing an average of 30% of all treated water to leakages and burst pipes along its 6000km water pipes network. Council received a US$144 million loan through Government facilitation from Exim Bank of China, but still the perennial water challenges persisted. What more could Government do besides creating an enabling environment for Council to meet its mandate. Council collects an average of US$14 million per month, yet there is nothing to show for this massive collection.
HCC had failed to rehabilitate its 4000 km network of roads, resulting in massive potholes. The City received a pothole patcher from ZINARA worth $550 000 but still failed to implement a meaningful road rehabilitation programme. The on-going road rehabilitation and resurfacing programme is an initiative by central Government after residents had appealed for its intervention.
What is apparent from the foregoing is that the crop of Councillors elected by urban residents is a far cry from the competency required to turnaround the City’s fortunes. Some of the challenges facing Zimbabwe’s economy emanate from the economic sanctions imposed on the country at the instigation of the opposition party, in the mistaken view of fixing ZANU PF.
All cities under the MDC Alliance are facing more or less the same WASH challenges.
Chamisa needs to get his Councillors to work, instead of playing politics with peoples’ lives.
