EDITOR — I AM very concerned with operations at Harare Municipality. I have seen vehicles belonging to the authority branded with the message that the city will achieve world-class city standards by 2025, but evidence on the ground proves otherwise. 

For example, the city fathers have hired private players to ‘clean’ the city, but the city remains dirty. We wake up every morning to streets filled with litter. The city streets have become an eyesore and at the rate at which the city fathers are failing to clean it one wonders how the city can achieve world-class standards in the next six years. I suspect that this outsourcing of basic services is meant to siphon money out of council coffers. I will not be surprised that these so-called service providers are being paid an arm and a leg for services that we don’t see on the ground. City council has more than enough workers who, if well co-ordinated and managed, can make the city clean. Instead of outsourcing services, which are readily available within the council, they should use the money to pay workers who have gone for months without salaries and procuring their own fleet which is cheaper in the long-term. Managers are failing us as they do not want to employ effective measures but prefer those that enrich themselves at the expense of service provision.

Zhakata, Avondale, Harare.