The Sunday News
Mthabisi Tshuma, Sunday News Correspondent
GWANDA Municipality has called on various stakeholders to help with funding to necessitate the functionality of the completed landfill.
The landfill has been completed after meeting the required requirements stipulated in Statutory Instrument 6 of 2007, but is yet to be functional due to the lack of the requisite equipment. Landfills are sites designated for dumping rubbish, garbage, or other sorts of solid wastes. Historically, they are the most common means of disposing solid waste which is either buried or left to pile in heaps.
Gwanda Town Clerk Ms Priscilla Nkala confirmed that the site has been on halt due to the challenges of acquiring the essential equipment.
“The landfill is now complete but we have not yet started using it as we are having challenges in securing the needed equipment for it to be fully functional. If we are to get the funding in order to purchase the equipment suitable for the landfill’s functionality it will go a long way in our service delivery and keeping the town of Gwanda a clean one and maybe in the future we might land the city status,” said Ms Nkala.
In 2017 the Environmental Management Agency (Ema) commended the municipality for the construction of the state-of-the-art landfill which is expected to address the town’s health hazard concerns mainly in the Jahunda bus termini.
Ms Nkala, who last week won the Public Sector Leader award in the Southern Region Megafest Business Awards, said as a municipality they have managed to address some of the residents’ water and sewer reticulation pleas.
“During my reign in the municipality one of the notable achievements is the rehabilitation of roads around the town. Currently there are no visible potholes throughout the town even in the high density suburbs. We have also constructed the 5 mega-litre reservoir that is assisting in terms of the water crisis and part of the sewer system was recently renovated,” she said.
Ms Nkala said the provision of water has been affected by the high power outages bedevilling the town and the rest of the country. This has seen some areas go for a week without water while some residents in Ward 5 have been living without water connections and sewer systems for the past 10 years.
The municipality received $1 566 000 under the Government’s devolution programme and is set to use the bulk of the money towards water and sanitation programmes.
@mthabisi_mthire.
