Ray Nkosi | Elevators at the five star Harare Holiday Inn hotel are a death trap in waiting as guests and clients continue to be trapped in them for hours.

A guest at the hotel who spoke to ZimEye.com narrated her ordeal after she was stuck in the lift for 45 minutes and was rescued by prayers answered just at the brink of collapsing.

“I was in the lift for nearly 45 minutes in the company of a male hotel guest who kept encouraging me to keep breathing when I was on the verge of losing breath inside the very hot elevator,” she said.

“I survived through the grace of God after I prayed heavily and the lift started on it’s own and moved to the 6th floor where the doors suddenly opened,” she added.

Other guests who spoke to ZimEye.com said that just yesterday only they witnessed four incidents where guests were trapped in the lift for periods ranging from 30 minutes up to an hour and a half.

According to the sources, the technical team servicing the lifts would always take its precious time to attend to the trapped people.

On of the sources claims that in one incident at about 5pm yesterday a number of guests were locked in the old elevator for nearly an hour and he could overhear the hotel reception staff talk to the technician who insisted that he was home having dinner and would only move when done.

Staff at the hotel refused to talk to ZimEye.com correspondents on the issue referring them to a senior officer who was not in the office at the time. However,  a technician with the company contracted to service the elevators said that the lift was trapping people yesterday because it was over used as it was the only one of the two working and the over use resulted in the motor of the lift continually heating up and ceasing.

Last year two people were killed in Bulawayo during an attempt to remove them from an elevator after being trapped in the high rising NRZ Building. Government has been calling on authorities to make sure that their elevators are regularly serviced and all old ones replaced.