The Sunday News
Sharon Chimenya, Masvingo Corerspondent
MASVINGO City Council is set to engage the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works on stand allocations in the city to avoid having residents build houses close to landfills.
The local authority is facing a nightmare after some people were allocated residential stands around the dumpsite making it a health concern. However, the city fathers were recently allocated a farm, about 12 kilometres out of the city by Government for the construction of a landfill. The construction of the first landfill is expected to be completed this year and council has budgeted $60 million for its completion.
Masvingo City Mayor Councillor Collen Maboke said that the new site will ease the problem of fire eruptions that were being faced by residents at the current site.
“This new site is far from the residential areas and in the event that people start fires which the residents were complaining about the smoke will not affect them. We will engage the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works on issues of stand allocation so that when allocating stands, we avoid similar problems that we have at the current dumpsite which is a health hazard to residents,” he said.
Town Clerk Engineer Edward Mukaratirwa said the construction of the landfill was being funded from local resources.
“All the work that we are doing at this new landfill site is fully funded from our internal council sources but we are negotiating with other stakeholders mainly Environmental Management Agency (Ema).We are drawing up a document that we want to use in order to seek funding to augment the internal resources because it’s not only about constructing the landfill bit also about maintaining it as a landfill not as a dumpsite.
“What separates a dumpsite from a landfill is more about management. Whatever waste is brought here has to be compacted and has to be covered. For this year we have budgeted $60 million, which is for the first cell that we are constructing. That’s the amount we anticipate to have used by the end of this year,” he said.
