Environmental activists have called on the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) to consider imposing hefty spot fines for people caught littering on the ground as part of the city’s waste management strategy.
The local authority has also been urged to place trash bins on street corners to discourage littering.
Litter, waste, and uncollected garbage have become an eyesore in Bulawayo’s Central Business District, while the stink in sanitary lanes has made it unbearable for residents who must negotiate their way past the garbage heaps.
Apart from the local authority, which fails to collect garbage, residents, including street vendors, are reportedly also to blame, as they are responsible for littering or dumping their waste on the ground.
Residents, however, blame BCC for failing to place trash bins on every street corner.
An environmental activist, Justice Zvaita, Executive Director of the Zimbabwe Climate Change Coalition, urged BCC to impose spot fines on litterers.
“The main challenge is people have this tendency of throwing and dumping waste all over. I think it’s high time, the city council started actively charging spot fines. Whoever is caught on the wrong side, throwing waste must be fined and charged,” he said during a review meeting of the city’s Local Environmental Action Plan (LEAP) recently.
Zvaita proposed that fines be sufficiently deterrent to deter people from committing environmental crimes.
“We are crying about blockages, these are as a result of negligence from stakeholders and us communities we don’t like our city,” Zvaita claimed.
“That’s the reason why some of us are just throwing waste all over. We really need to review our penalties and make sure that whoever is caught on the wrong side of the law must be arrested or fined. I think that will make our city clean.”
Provincial Tourism Officer for Bulawayo Metropolitan under the Ministry of Environment, Climate, Tourism and Hospitality Industry, Desmond Makosa stated that a lack of bins forced people to litter, so BCC must place bins throughout the city.
“What’s our strategy in terms of bins? One reason why people are throwing litter everywhere is not because they want to but because they don’t have anywhere to dispose their litter,” Makosa said.
“So you realise someone may be behaved for some while but if you have to go for a kilometre before you get to a next bin, definitely somewhere, somehow or something, one will lose patience.”
Makosa stated that the city should work on developing a strategy that will result in more trash cans.
“There are people who are willing to assist in that regard. But it all goes with what you (the local authority) have in place in terms of partners. We really need to think and reflect about the issue of bins especially in town,” said the tourism officer.
In response, Bulawayo Town Clerk, Christopher Dube, claimed the local authority had “been and continues trying to put bins” in various areas.
He acknowledged that trash bins were necessary as the city’s vision was to be a smart city by 2024 and could not achieve that smart city status without having bins.
“These are issues we talk about when it comes to public convenience. Since other bins have been stolen or vandalised so to try minimise the situation, we look at areas where there is garbage generation and put bins there,” Dube said.
“Imagine we have put the bins now along Leopold Takawira Avenue. It’s not that we are saying those people can continue with their (illegal) business of boarding (and touting there) but we recognise the garbage generation at that area so we put bins there to make sure people throw waste in bins.”
The town clerk, on the other hand, lamented that some people do not even throw waste inside bins, preferring to dump litter on the ground, including those in buses who threw litter out of windows.
“It’s terrible. Let’s put our heads together on this issue,” Dube said.
