Opinion / Columnist
The MDC-T has failed Harare residents
31 Oct 2017 at 14:09hrs | Views
The MDC-T has been in charge of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare for the past 17 years and, despite promising "change" for better times, it has been one monumental disappointment. The Party has even appointed as mayors people with business backgrounds such as the incumbent Harare Mayor, Bernard Manyenyeni and his predecessor, Muchadeyi Masunda with the hope of improving the city's administration but all to no avail.
Despite collecting over US$12 million in revenue monthly, Harare residents continue to make do with very poor service. The administration and councillors shamelessly offer excuses instead of service when residents complain. When the city's motorists bemoan the pothole-riddled state of the roads, which some road users have renamed pot-hells, the city management and councillors are always quick to blame the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) for not distributing enough funds to meet the capital's road maintenance needs. The question on many people's mouths is: What is the local authority doing with the money which it is collecting from the ratepayers?
Despite claiming to be pursuing the goal of achieving a world class city status by 2025, the party in control of Harare has over the years demonstrated that it wants the capital city to be as backward as possible. Take refuse collection, for example. Over the past six or so months the city's administration has been justifying the uncollected refuse all over the city by citing the lack of refuse trucks. In the September the city recently took delivery of 30 refuse trucks worth US$3.1 million but the uncollected refuse continues to accumulate. The council and management have presided over the decaying of the city to the extent that they now expect the residents to accept it as the new norm. For all claims to bring about change, Harare residents will be the first ones to testify that the MDC-T has brought negative change to Zimbabwe's capital.
The city authorities should be ashamed of themselves that it had to take His Excellency, President Robert Mugabe to express his displeasure with the deteriorating state of the city for the council and management to run around and try to create some form of order. They had failed to order long distance bus operators back to Mbare Msika instead of using illegal pick up points such as the Simon Muzenda Street for Mutare-bound buses, the Exhibition Park for Bulawayo-bound buses and Sam Nujoma Street for Mount Darwin-bound buses. It took the death of a Mozambique-bound Mathias Gore in September 2017 at the hands of harassing touts at the Simon Muzenda Street illegal terminus for the city authorities to lift a feeble, ineffectual and perfunctory finger in reaction. This only managed to rid the illegal terminus of operations but elsewhere in the city the local authority turned a blind eye and allowed the bus operators to continue operating normally.
It was only after the President's statement that the city authorities announced that they had identified areas where these bus termini could be housed. Two weeks ago the City of Harare moved earthmoving equipment to some of the areas such as the parcel of land between Parirenyatwa Hospital and Milton Park suburb. Its workmen briefly scraped the land in a half-hearted attempt to clear and prepare the ground for a new satellite bus terminal to cater for Mount Darwin-bound buses but to this day no progress has been made. This is a clear testimony of the local authority's level of commitment to bringing order to the city.
One of the major reasons why the travelling public now shuns Mbare Musika, which was one of the foremost and busiest bus hubs in Southern Africa, is the high level of deterioration of basic infrastructure such as sheds, which sheltered people from the elements, due to the local authority's laissez faire approach to the stewardship of the city's assets. The city has a municipal police force but bus-boarding people continue to be mugged and forced to board buses by touts against their wishes because the city authorities have abandoned their responsibility to the residents opting to coop themselves at the Town House where they concentrate on their obscene and disproportionately high salaries and allowances. This has led the people to devise means of boarding buses with a modicum of safety, dignity and convenience. That people are now boarding buses at undesignated points is a demonstration of the city authorities' failure to respond to the people's concerns.
Other areas where the council and management has failed dismally include the provision of clean water and maintenance of the city's sewer system. In Ward 16, Mabelreign, the city is playing games with residents of the area around Government flats along Quendon Road, parts of Sunridge and Greencroft who have gone for weeks without water because the water which feeds their areas is now being channelled to Sentosa because residents of that suburb complained of lack of water. This demonstrates the cluelessness of the kind of people who are administering the nation's city. It shows that the people who are leading the city have no idea of the mettle and calibre expected of the people who should lead the modern city that every Harare resident aspires to live in.
In New Marlborough, for nearly two weeks residents have been contending with spewing raw sewage which is flowing on their properties and along roads, endangering their health. They have reported the matter to the local authority which responded by sprinkling powdered chlorine on the sewage to temper its pungent smell but no long term solution was administered. The councillor of the area, Charity Bango reportedly admitted being aware of the problem, which she said was caused by a pumping problem, and casually said that the relevant department was working on the problem. No sense of urgency or service orientation. That is the City of Harare and its MDC-T councillors for you.
Over the past 17 years the MDC-T councillors have grown complacent and conceited and now take the residents and their concerns for granted. Their basis: Harare is made up of urban constituencies where people vote the MDC-T out of protest, genuine support or sympathy. Many people, however, feel that the party has for long squandered the people's vote by engaging in self-enriching corrupt activities and abandoning the people, who voted them into office. As the 2018 elections beckon, one hopes that the people's experiences with the City of Harare management and the MDC-T councillors will force them think before they vote the party back in charge of running Harare.
Despite collecting over US$12 million in revenue monthly, Harare residents continue to make do with very poor service. The administration and councillors shamelessly offer excuses instead of service when residents complain. When the city's motorists bemoan the pothole-riddled state of the roads, which some road users have renamed pot-hells, the city management and councillors are always quick to blame the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) for not distributing enough funds to meet the capital's road maintenance needs. The question on many people's mouths is: What is the local authority doing with the money which it is collecting from the ratepayers?
Despite claiming to be pursuing the goal of achieving a world class city status by 2025, the party in control of Harare has over the years demonstrated that it wants the capital city to be as backward as possible. Take refuse collection, for example. Over the past six or so months the city's administration has been justifying the uncollected refuse all over the city by citing the lack of refuse trucks. In the September the city recently took delivery of 30 refuse trucks worth US$3.1 million but the uncollected refuse continues to accumulate. The council and management have presided over the decaying of the city to the extent that they now expect the residents to accept it as the new norm. For all claims to bring about change, Harare residents will be the first ones to testify that the MDC-T has brought negative change to Zimbabwe's capital.
The city authorities should be ashamed of themselves that it had to take His Excellency, President Robert Mugabe to express his displeasure with the deteriorating state of the city for the council and management to run around and try to create some form of order. They had failed to order long distance bus operators back to Mbare Msika instead of using illegal pick up points such as the Simon Muzenda Street for Mutare-bound buses, the Exhibition Park for Bulawayo-bound buses and Sam Nujoma Street for Mount Darwin-bound buses. It took the death of a Mozambique-bound Mathias Gore in September 2017 at the hands of harassing touts at the Simon Muzenda Street illegal terminus for the city authorities to lift a feeble, ineffectual and perfunctory finger in reaction. This only managed to rid the illegal terminus of operations but elsewhere in the city the local authority turned a blind eye and allowed the bus operators to continue operating normally.
One of the major reasons why the travelling public now shuns Mbare Musika, which was one of the foremost and busiest bus hubs in Southern Africa, is the high level of deterioration of basic infrastructure such as sheds, which sheltered people from the elements, due to the local authority's laissez faire approach to the stewardship of the city's assets. The city has a municipal police force but bus-boarding people continue to be mugged and forced to board buses by touts against their wishes because the city authorities have abandoned their responsibility to the residents opting to coop themselves at the Town House where they concentrate on their obscene and disproportionately high salaries and allowances. This has led the people to devise means of boarding buses with a modicum of safety, dignity and convenience. That people are now boarding buses at undesignated points is a demonstration of the city authorities' failure to respond to the people's concerns.
Other areas where the council and management has failed dismally include the provision of clean water and maintenance of the city's sewer system. In Ward 16, Mabelreign, the city is playing games with residents of the area around Government flats along Quendon Road, parts of Sunridge and Greencroft who have gone for weeks without water because the water which feeds their areas is now being channelled to Sentosa because residents of that suburb complained of lack of water. This demonstrates the cluelessness of the kind of people who are administering the nation's city. It shows that the people who are leading the city have no idea of the mettle and calibre expected of the people who should lead the modern city that every Harare resident aspires to live in.
In New Marlborough, for nearly two weeks residents have been contending with spewing raw sewage which is flowing on their properties and along roads, endangering their health. They have reported the matter to the local authority which responded by sprinkling powdered chlorine on the sewage to temper its pungent smell but no long term solution was administered. The councillor of the area, Charity Bango reportedly admitted being aware of the problem, which she said was caused by a pumping problem, and casually said that the relevant department was working on the problem. No sense of urgency or service orientation. That is the City of Harare and its MDC-T councillors for you.
Over the past 17 years the MDC-T councillors have grown complacent and conceited and now take the residents and their concerns for granted. Their basis: Harare is made up of urban constituencies where people vote the MDC-T out of protest, genuine support or sympathy. Many people, however, feel that the party has for long squandered the people's vote by engaging in self-enriching corrupt activities and abandoning the people, who voted them into office. As the 2018 elections beckon, one hopes that the people's experiences with the City of Harare management and the MDC-T councillors will force them think before they vote the party back in charge of running Harare.
Source - Nobleman Runyanga
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