Harare littering Culture Under Fire as Mayor Mafume Promises Drainage Fix

Wilma Mavhengere

Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume has stated that the city will intensify its efforts to combat littering and is working to enhance urban drainage systems to prevent flooding.

During a recent press briefing at Town House, Mafume warned that the city’s littering culture, combined with inadequate waste management, is clogging drainage systems and posing a risk of water damage to residential areas.

“The idea is that we need to have our drain system to quickly whisk away the water to where it is supposed to go and away from areas that we critically need. Some of the problems that we deal with in our littering culture, we always try to hide litter where no one is,” Mafume said.

“If you look at the pictures of our people doing the drain clearing, it’s just litter that is being put there by our colleagues in the informal sector.”

He further articulates that inconsistency in waste bin availability and improper disposal habits continue to undermine these initiatives.

“So one of the measures is to be hard on littering. There’s an addiction to littering in the city. People want to throw things down the drain, into the drain, and they clog our drainage system.

“We need to come down hard on littering. Two, we need to clear the drains regularly, and also repair them to make sure that water freely moves. But we are happy that when it rains, a few minutes after, 30 minutes or so, after the rain has stopped or there is a pause, you will find that within the CBD, water will have gone out of the CBD,” he said.

He added that swift action is essential to maintain free-flowing water and shield communities from avoidable floods.

“It is in the residential areas where there are some significant challenges in terms of the water getting into people’s houses. The problem with pictures sometimes is that someone can take a picture of you and put it in front of you. But it’s a picture in a moment. So if you move around, all the litter that was cleared has been moved.

“But probably, I think it needs to be done contemporaneously, or as the people are removing the litter. But we have a system. They normally work with the tractor doing the rounds and collecting the rubbish that they have removed,” said Mafume.

“If there are lapses in the system that we have adopted, we are going to deal with the lapses. But I think most of the litter that we collected is moved or has been moved.”