The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted service delivery at the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) after several members of the sewer task team were forced into quarantine after being exposed to the deadly virus.
Bulawayo City Town Clerk Christopher Dube, in a statement, Saturday, noted that a rise in Covid-19 cases at the council has resulted in numerous sewer task members going into quarantine and some into isolation.
Dube said this has caused a significant reduction in the number of people available to attend to sewer blockages timeously, resulting in a serious backlog.
“The City of Bulawayo would like to advise members of the public that its sewer task team had been affected by the rising number of Covid-19 cases. As a result, this has impacted negatively on service delivery resulting in a growing backlog of sewer chokes that need to be attended to,” said Dube.
“The Covid-19 has, in some instances, resulted in the quarantine of whole teams, wherein a member has tested positive, with five out of eight teams currently in quarantine and isolation.”
Dube said while all precautionary measures of masking up, social distancing and hand sanitising have been meticulously observed, and vaccination is underway, the spread of the virus among council staff has not been averted, especially outside the work environment.
“This has greatly reduced staffing levels available to attend to outstanding sewer blockages throughout the city, hence negatively impacting on the reaction time for attending to sewer reports. As a consequence, an increase of sewer blockage backlog might be observed,” he said.
Earlier this week, Ward 28 Councillor Kidwell Mujuru blamed slow reaction to sewer blockage reports on the unavailability of resources with the city council.
Mujuru said the local authority was struggling with such resources as motor vehicles to access reported areas, citing that in some areas where three cars are supposed to be available, there would be only one thus resulting in poor service delivery.
