Harare (New Ziana)-The Harare City Council (HCC) will soon intensify enforcement of its anti-littering by-laws to reduce garbage in the Central Business District, which it is struggling to manage largely due to illegal dumping and lack of legal waste disposal options.
In a notice, the HCC said private waste operators and shop owners who would caught on the wrong side of the law risked being penalized.
The CBD in particular and residential areas have become an eyesore from mounds of garbage dumped at undesignated places by private refuse collectors and shop owners, exposing residents to diseases such as cholera diarrhoea and typhoid.
It is against this background that the HCC has resolved to enforce the Harare (Anti-litter) by-Laws contained in Statutory Instrument 30 of 2016, which states that if any individual is caught throwing litter everywhere he/she is liable to pay a fine.
“The City will from now be escalating its efforts to enforce its Anti-Litter By-law number 30 of 2016,” it said.
The local authority said it was failing to collect refuse during the day at bus termini particularly at Copacabana, Market Square, Charge Office, 4th Street and Rezende Parkade because they would be inaccessible as they will be choked up by buses and commuter omnibuses,” it said.
“This has led to the City having to clear these Bus Termini Skip Points of waste during the night when accessibility is better.”
The local authority said private players were hampering its waste-management efforts by collecting refuse from residential areas and dumping it for free at designated points while shop owners were increasing the problem by employing street kids to dispose of their waste at these same points.
“Shop Owners are not permitted to dump their waste at these skip points, but to have the requisite number of waste storage bins,” it said.
The HCC advised shop owners to put out their bins into service lanes for collection by its refuse trucks, adding it religiously deployed refuse compactors daily into the CBD.
Shop owners should also ensure that service lanes were easily accessible to the refuse compactors.
Refuse removal contractors caught on the wrong side of the law risked having their trucks confiscated and paying heavy penalties while shop owners risked losing their business licenses.
Vendors, both legal and illegal, should ensure that the places that they operate from were clean and free of litter, the local authority said, adding vehicle shells parked in the CBD and car parks throughout the city would be disposed of in terms of the same by-law.
According to the Zimbabwe Intergrated Solid Waste Management Plan, urban centres were estimated to overall generate 1.65 million tons of waste in 2011.
New Ziana.
