By Innocent Ndorikanda.
Harare, Zimbabwe. (News Of The South) – Here, is not a story of houses with creaking floors, spine chilling cold drafts and eerie sounds in that haze of a ghostly atmosphere typical of a horror movie scene. It is about a city where demons vomit the curse of typhoid, cholera, overcrowded streets and all evils.
Yet we are told it is called the sunshine city, Alas! And truth forbid.
For a city commenced a century and quarter ago with the current infrastructure having been built in the 1950s for a population of about 300,000 residences and remained without further development yet the population continued to surge to current figures of about 3 million.
And for a city that is trapped in a financial mess in that of the 13 million of revenue it receives from ratepayers each month 9 million of which goes to servicing the salary bill while 2 million goes for treating water which demands 9 different chemicals.
There is a question here that, can the reminder in the monthly revenue deal with hordes of litter? Of roads that have gone as a semblance of pools dotted ubiquitously separated by strips of tarmac like shells because of an infestation of potholes, what is the solution?
Is this a sunshine city?
It is a city built on the fortress of hell or perchance sitting on the lap of the devil cuddling with him on the ploy of a god, it is so sad.
How can a city have Chitungwiza Town Council release 60 megalitres of raw sewage a day into Lake Chivero, and wish away typhoid and cholera.
So sad is the story of Harare in that the city’s ills are all man made, just a cursory look at the city’s salary schedule shows that the city is arguably one of the most paying employers in the country and this is happening at the expense of service delivery as some of the suburbs have gone up to ten years without seeing water out of their taps.
Harare mayor, Bernard Manyenyeni was last year quoted by the Newsday to have said the city was in discussions to rationalise its wage bill but it so sickening that nothing has been done by now.
“We need to relook whether we are paying the correct amount for the correct profession and a correct job title. We risk paying more than we should at the expense of service delivery, which is our key mandate,” he was quoted to have said then.
The city’s salary schedule expose that a number of directors earn a salary and benefits in the range of 11 000 and this generosity is not preserved for top management with guards earning around 900 a month almost double a police constable, solder of the lowest rank and a prison guard too.
This is just to mention a few examples of professionals that are exorbitantly. Harare, in the year 2014 was trapped in the Salary-gate scandal, with the then town clerk Tendai Mahachi reportedly pocketing around $37 000 monthly.
The city recently decentralised its administration to local regional or districts, hopefully this is going to give a respite to the woes that bedevil life in Harare.
There has been suggestions on what the city of Harare could do now do in order to salvage the situation especially as they have moved a step in the right direction in decentralising administration.
Mr Mennard Chekai an analyst with African Centre for Real Estate made certain observations that this writer thought sharing in this article.
“We commend that they have decentralised but now there is now need for citizen engagement and participation. Citizen Participation should go beyond electing city fathers into being critical partners in developmental programmes”, he said.
He said the city council should be innovative and approachable by citizens in its problems because solutions are with the people.
His argument can be put simply as to say Harare should allow ideas and partnerships with the private sector in providing solutions in order to bring solutions to the problems that the city is facing.
Harare has struggles with waste management, provision of clean water, establishment and maintenance of street lights, parking and ranking of public transport. It is in these areas and many more that Chekai believes citizen participation is the panacea. Can somebody exorcise the City and bring back the sun shine; the sky is cloudy and stormy.
Innocent Ndorikanda writes in his capacity as Journalist and he invites your comments via his email.
Inndorikanda78@gmail.com
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