The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has expressed concern about residents’ ‘slow’ adoption of the national cleaning programme, despite the fact that the exercise will go a long way towards addressing the city’s waste management challenges.
According to the National Clean-Up Day exercise, it is the responsibility of every individual across the country to clean their surrounding areas, whether they are places of work, education, religion, recreational, or residential premises, in order to manage waste management.
The National Clean-Up Day exercise was launched by President Emmerson Mnangagwa in December 2018, where he declared the first Friday of each calendar month as a National Clean-Up Day.
This was in line with Section 73 of Zimbabwe’s constitution, which upholds the “right to an environment that is not harmful to tier health and well-being.”
However, during a review of Bulawayo’s Local Environmental Action Plan (LEAP) with various stakeholders on Thursday, Town Clerk, Christopher Dube lamented that stakeholders have slowly embraced the clean-up exercise.
“What we are discussing is for all of us. If we are failing, don’t point a finger at City of Bulawayo alone, of course we have a fair shame but what is your contribution (in keeping city clean). In the presentations I realised that we have not mentioned the national cleaning programme because that is a strategy brought in by government and EMA as our partner,” Dube said.
“As city of Bulawayo we have been seriously engaged on a monthly basis but what I see is a slow buy in on the national cleaning programme. I don’t know for whatever ever reason.”
The town clerk said National Clean-Up Day exercise was in the spirit of creating a clean, safe and healthy environment.
“If we don’t pick it up as city of Bulawayo, which means then there’s a problem. This should be reflected as a strategy on the action plan,” Dube said.
The National Clean-Up Day exercise is undertaken from 8am to 10am on the first Friday of each calendar month and every stakeholder is expected to play a pivotal and exemplary role to this commitment.
