'Green Bombers' doing repairs on town street lights

The ZANU-PF dominated Gwanda Municipal Council has passed a resolution to use ZANU-PF youth brigade from the Border Gezi youth training centre in the area to re-do all its street lighting.

Public lighting in the town has been in a very sorry sight for the last decade and the town is very dark at night resulting in an increase in night crime. 90% of all the street lights in the town's CBD are not working with some poles and cables lying dangerously on the ground. The townships are very dark with all the tower lights and street lights that were installed in the late 80s now dysfunctional.

According to a report made by Councillor Mduduzi Ncube of ward 4 at a Gwanda Agenda public consultative meeting over the weekend, council has resolved to use the youths being trained by the minister of Psychamotor Education under the guidance of the Ministry of Youth to do the intensive repair works.

Council is levying every house hold in the town a considerable amount of money towards street lighting and yet no effort has been put on the repairs and maintenance of the street lights.

In the last council, the councillors shocked many people when it awarded a tender to do the street lights to a sitting councillor who runs a small electrical business in the town. Although evidence has been sourced from council that a substantial amount of money was paid towards that tender and spares bought there was no corresponding improvement on the public lighting to show for it.

According an official in the council's engineering department the tender for public lighting had over the years been awarded to big companies that had the expertise and equipment to do the job which is suddenly not the case though residents still pay public lighting levy.

"Over the years, the Municipality used to flight a tender for the maintenance of the streets and public lighting and was on a number of occasions awarded to prominent Gwanda electrical company Ray Hollins Electrical which maintained the lights very well under a small budget," said the council official. "We don't know how this changed in the long run and the tender was changed to the councillor (name supplied)."

In an interview with residents in the town, the residents expressed signs of joy that at least council was listening to their calls to work on public lighting that was a cause for concern. However, they expressed disappointed on the council's lack of commitment to the exercise by continuously hiring incapable and unqualified personnel to do the job wasting council money and time.

"Council needs to put their money where their mouth is. They cannot keep on using unqualified people to do the job and waste money and time instead of hiring qualified and prominent companies by an open tender once and for all." Said a resident Mr Oscar Ncube of the "dark city" of Spitzkop township where crime is rampant at night.



The Municipality has also indicated that it has since been able to acquire funding from the Ministry of Local Government to erect four new tower lights in the town and the company to do the job has been identified and paid. It was not immediately clear which company was given the job to set up the tower lights nor if a formal tender was put up as efforts to get comment from the Town Clerk or the Mayor were futile.