State of disaster declared in Harare as rubbish piles up in streets

Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa has declared a state of disaster in Harare province due to the “deplorable” state of cleanliness in the capital city.

According to a government gazette, titled “State of disaster: emergency solid waste management”, the capital Harare is “littered with waste dumps, accumulating in business and residential areas and open burning of garbage and indiscriminate illegal dumping of solid waste and littering”.

“The local authorities in the province are unable to manage the waste due, among other reasons, to their failure to invest in waste management infrastructure and the related equipment and human resources and to their inefficient collection practices and lack of environmental control systems,” the gazette reads.

“As a result of the failure to properly manage waste within the Harare metropolitan province, a state of disaster exists in that province with effect from the promulgation of this declaration,” it says.

The government gazette tasked the country’s Environmental Management Agency with co-ordinating the removal of waste dumps by “mapping, quantification and clearing of illegal waste dumps and direct local authorities within the Harare metropolitan province to establish appropriately designed and designated waste transfer stations”.

With an estimated population of more than 2-million, the capital Harare is filthy with dump sites and rubbish piling up in the streets because of deteriorating service delivery and non-collection of refuse by the city council.

In 2022, Harare residents filed an application at the high court seeking an order to compel the city and local government and public works department to collect refuse and clear all dumpsites that have accumulated in the capital.

In June, the government declared a national state of emergency in Mbare the oldest township in Harare. Houses in the township were designed as single quarters for male workers during the colonial period, but now they are overcrowded and dilapidated with poor sanitation and families sharing single rooms.

As a result of the non-collection of refuse, dump sites and a water crisis with residents digging shallow wells and relying on open and untreated water sources, this year some Harare residential areas were declared cholera hotspots.