Harare, Zimbabwe (News of the South)-The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) has accused the City Council of being a challenge to its operations due to the seeming random allocation of stands, a senior official has said.
Speaking to the media on the sidelines of a workshop in Harare, EMA Director Priscilla Shoko said the two belonged to different ministries and that policy divergence was proving problematic.
“We have realised that our main challenge is coming from the City Council. We fall under the Ministry of Environment whilst they fall under the Ministry of Local Government”.
“We don’t want to fight but to come together to deal with issues such as the issuing of stands illegally into wetlands”, said Shoko.
Though remaining diplomatic in her revelation of the challenges that the City Council is bringing to her organisation Shoko called for an integrated approach to stave off problematic clashes.
“City Councils have their own mandate but we need to integrate and so we are in the process of working together and so far there has been so much progress”, she said.
Council has been dishing out stands in some wetlands whilst a number of land barons have also joined in selling shady pieces of land in undesignated areas around Harare leading to scandals and calls for audits.
According to a Ramsar Convention news portal “wetlands are indispensable for the countless benefits or “ecosystem services” that they provide humanity, ranging from freshwater supply, food and building materials, and biodiversity, to flood control, groundwater recharge, and climate change mitigation.
“Yet study after study demonstrates that wetland area and quality continue to decline in most regions of the world. As a result, the ecosystem services that wetlands provide to people are compromised.
Wetlands prevent flooding by holding water like a sponge an action which keeps river levels normal and filter and purify the surface water.
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