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Bulawayo mayor, Councillor Martin Moyo, cuts a ribbon to commission the new trucks at the City Hall Car Park on Wednesday

Auxilia Katongomara, Chronicle Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council has commissioned 17 vehicles that include refuse trucks and water bowsers worth more than $2 million as part of efforts to improve service delivery in the city.

Mayor, councillor Martin Moyo said the seven refuse compactors, four motorised water bowsers and six tipper trucks come at a time when the municipality was battling transport challenges.

“The commissioning today comes at a time when we are battling with illegal dumping of waste and are constantly faced with disruptions to our refuse collection schedule due to frequent breakdown of old compactors,” said Clr Moyo.

He challenged residents to play their part to ensure a clean city.

“We expect residents to play their part of bringing out their waste on the scheduled refuse collection days at 6AM.

“Residents have an obligation to avoid illegal dumping at all costs and it’s mostly residents who fail to bring out their refuse who are culprits of illegal dumping,” said Clr Moyo.

“We ought to be environmentally responsible. Our children no longer have safe playing grounds as open spaces have been turned into illegal dumping places. Let’s shun abhorrent practices and help our city retain its status of being the cleanest city in the region.”

Director of engineering services Simela Dube said the local authority had been losing a lot of money maintaining its old fleet.

He said they had adopted a disposal policy that will see the old fleet of vehicles which had outlived their life span being disposed of.

Dube said some time ago, the city was losing around $2,5 million maintaining the old vehicles yet the cost of purchasing new ones was much lower.

“I would like to congratulate policy makers for coming up with this initiative, to date we have a fleet of 80 vehicles,” said Dube.