The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has started replacing brass sewer manhole covers with plastic ones following an increase in theft and vandalism of the infrastructure, council finance manager Ndumiso Nkiwane has said.
Nkiwane said the theft of manhole covers was placing additional financial pressure on the cash-strapped local authority, which has been forced to divert resources towards replacing stolen and vandalised infrastructure.
He was speaking during This Morning on Asakhe, where he discussed the city’s 2026 mid-term budget review and the financial pressures facing the local authority.
“I want to believe the residents of the city of Bulawayo have a role to play, and one of the key things that we like to appeal to them is safeguarding the infrastructure that we would have deployed in many areas,” Nkiwane said.
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“We have noted that our manhole covers are getting stolen. So, what we’re now doing is we’re putting the plastic. The previous one was brass.”
Nkiwane said the theft suggested the existence of an illegal market involving people stealing the covers and others buying them.
“But exactly who is taking this brass and where are they taking these to? This too is probably a question that we need to answer,” he said.
“I can tell you there’s somebody out there who is buying these things and then there’s somebody who then steals them and there’s somebody who buys these things. So, you can see the whole chain that it’s probably an illegal chain.”
He said vandalism of council infrastructure was undermining efforts to improve service delivery because the local authority had to commit additional resources to replacing damaged or stolen infrastructure.
“And this then brings back the service delivery agenda that you are trying to do. It means we now have to go back and look for these minerals to replace,” Nkiwane said.
“So what we’ve done now is we have replaced. You used the plastics to replace these metal manholes.”
Nkiwane said the appeal to residents to safeguard council infrastructure extended beyond sewer manholes, arguing that protecting public infrastructure was essential to sustaining service delivery.
“This is not about safeguarding just manholes, any council infrastructure, we appeal that the residents must take ownership and ensure that it is safe so that we then continue to deliver the services going forward,” he said.
He also raised concern over the vandalism of sewer lines, saying damage to the infrastructure resulted in additional replacement costs for the local authority.
“The vandalism on these sewer lines is also a concern because once we vandalize it, it means we now have to do the replacement,” Nkiwane said.
He urged residents to protect council infrastructure while also meeting their obligations to pay municipal bills on time.
“So we appeal to the residents to safeguard our infrastructure that’s besides paying their bills on time. And we believe that together we can make this city a very, a very, a very good city to live in,” he said.
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