04/06/2015
Harare Council: City to become world class by 2025 ??
Council launches Vision 2012– 2025
Harare City Council launched its Vision 2012- 2025 that it says will seek to include all stakeholders, especially residents, in the transformation of Harare into a world class city. It says by 2025 Harare would be a world class city with a premium mass transport system, a young urbanized population, a regional transport hub, enough vehicle parking space, a highly suburbanized population, a highly ranked local research university, a hot city economy and hot night life among others.
This was launched at a colourful event, which was attended by Local Government and Urban Development minister Ignatius Chombo, Harare Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda, senior council officials, business community and civil society organisations, created expectations amongst residents that perhaps problems of water unavailability, inefficient refuse collection, pot-holed roads, poorly resourced schools and health service centres, mulfunctional city traffic lights, accommodation woes and many other challenges would be history come 2025.
Since the launch of vision 2025, numerous steps have been taken to make this a reality. Numerous desolate buildings within the city centre have been demolished and new structures put up, those that had seen long periods of inactivity revamped, resulting in the opening of numerous shopping malls and food outlets. Massive rehabilitative work is being done on major roads, beginning with samora machel, as well as the installation of traffic cameras at major intersections within the city to curb road offenses. The transport sector has also seen major changes with public transport operators being allocated various termini from which to ply their routes.
This along with the commissioning of CABS to construct low income housing in the budiriro area had given a slight hope that this ambitious vision would indeed be attainable.
But as is always the case, we are yet again disappointed. We had been fooled into thinking that this time it would be different. Having spoken of such an ambitious turnaround, it seems as though our city fathers have forgotten about their goals. In recent times the city fathers have faced numerous financial challenges which have resulted in council workers going for months without receiving their salaries. With this harsh reality, the city council have taken it upon themselves to put in place numerous emergency measures to raise funds for their starving employees.
Numerous vending stands and flea markets have sprung up all through the cities with the vendors paying daily “rentals” for the street corners on which they display their wares. This has resulted in numerous hardships for pedestrians and motorists alike. Walkways are now nonexistent with vendors lining the road sides throughout major roads in the “so called sunshine city”.
With there having been so much talk and emphasis on promoting tourism and transforming Harare into a world-class city by 2025, this appears as a major step in the wrong direction. Is this truly the transformation that was spoken about?? The city centre has become overrun and is no closer to attain world-class standards by any stretch of the imagination. Surely there ought to be other avenues for generating funds for our cash strapped city council (with rooting out corrupt elements being at the top of that list). Surely if our mayor and his staff had any semblance of competence, this idea would have been thrown out long ago, along with the individual who brought it about. Offering vending licences and allocating space for their wares to be displayed was a commendable idea, especially in light of the shortage of formal employment, but, the manner it which it is being implemented is far from exemplary. Surely a certain amount of sanity and order can be brought about and areas designated for such activities.
Apart from being a hazard to pedestrians and motorist, it has resulted in numerous health hazards and widespread littering. Vendors selling vegetables and fruits seemly do not care about their surroundings. Banana peels, apple cores, smashed tomatoes are awash in the streets, with very little if any effort being made to clean up. The city council is failing to provide adequate facilities in terms of stands, spacing and cleaning as litter has become a permanent feature on the street of Harare.
So we call upon our city fathers to look into this matter and see how best they can address this pressing issue. Us as residence of this our nations capital were very impressed by the ambitious move taken by the city council to put Harare on the world map as a hub for business, leisure and a true world class city. There is still a lot to be done, but as we all know; Rome wasn’t built in a day. It requires the effort of all the stakeholders of this city, residence, business people, city fathers and civil society organisations to work together for the greater good.
