Acting Minister Coventry denies City’s bid to recruit drain cleaners, grass cutters and street cleaners.

Council is currently carrying out a drain cleaning, catch pits cleaning, grass cutting, pipe drain de-blocking and spoil removal exercise City wide.

However, our efforts have been hampered by shortage of manpower. Council has already engaged the parent ministry, Ministry of Local Government and Public Works seeking approval to employ Drain Cleaners, grass cutters and street cleaners as per the ministerial directive which is against the spirit of devolution.

The ministry requested justification for the need for those specific workers, despite providing the justification to the ministry is still to respond, after frequent follow ups with the Ministry we have been advised that Minister July Moyo is on Leave and the Acting Minister Kirsty Coventry refused to approve.

Once the City, has been cleared to recruit, it will expedite the process.
It must however be noted that the city is not resting on its laurels over the matter, the drain clearance is a recurrent routine exercise which is carried out throughout the year, primarily because of the behaviour of the general citizenry and vendors who have a tendency of using catch pits as litter pits.

This results in blockages of catch pits and pipes leading to flooding. Progress on this is not noticeable as rubbish is swept into catch pits and storm water drains daily. Vendors also store their wares in catch pits.

Our amenities division is currently doing day and night shifts in order to control litter while our Roads division has established a designated gang responsible for drain cleaning and flood management to man the CBD throughout the rainy season.

There also is a joint drain cleaning, drain clearing and spoil removal operation between the Amenities division and the Roads division.

This is a complementary exercise to the main drain cleaning programme. The main aim is to clear the illegal dumpsites in the CBD.

The illegal dumps lead to flooding after the waste from the dumps is washed into storm water drains.

There will be heavy enforcement and littering control in the City. At the moment on most street corners in town we have vendors roasting mealies and leaving the mealie covers thrown all over, there eventually find their way into our drainage system.

The City has procured a new excavator which will be dedicated to the major collector’s/outfall drain clearing some of which have not been cleared in the past 8 or more years.

The City has also procured three excavators, one Front End Loader and three Tractors – trailer combinations to assist in loading and transportation of spoil from drains as this is one of our major challenges at the moment.

Further it must be noted that most of our steel catch pits covers, half drum metal bins installed by City parking were all stolen and sold as scrap in Magaba, Gazaland,and other areas. The city is embarking on installation of plastic bins.

The Roads division has started a concrete works yard to produce kerbs and catch pits.

Some new construction/developments, invasion of wetlands and unauthorised trenching done at night is also interfering with our underground storm water drainage where at times drainage is completely cut and blocked.

The situation requires all stakeholders to come together and avoid flooding through responsible behaviour.

I thank you
Councillor Kudzai Kadzombe
CHAIRPERSON HUMAN RESOURCES AND GENERAL PURPOSES COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSON COUNCILLOR KUDZAI KADZOMBE