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George Maponga, Masvingo Bureau
Masvingo City Council has started upgrading old hostels in Mucheke suburb that will benefit more than 150 households as part of targets set under the 100-day plan by authorities in the country’s oldest town.

The upgrade is being done in phases and seeks to improve ablution facilities at the hostels where families were living under a communal model. The old hostels in Mucheke were constructed for low-income workers during the colonial era.

The city’s director of Housing and Community Services Mr Levison Nzvura said council was working flat out to complete upgrading the hostels to improve the living standards of the families.

“We are doing this project in phases using internal resources and the speed at which work will be completed depends on the availability of funds, so at the moment we cannot exactly state when the work will be completed, but it will be very soon,” said Mr Nzvura.

The city engineer Mr Tawanda Gozo said council wanted to reduce the density of families sharing a single toilet at the hostels.

“We are focusing on upgrading ablution facilities so that we move away from the existing communal setting where a whole hostel shares a single toilet,” he said. “We are targeting to have at least three families sharing a toilet, the whole idea is to improve the living conditions of our people.”

Town Clerk Mr Adloph Gusha said the upgrading project was long overdue, but work was being slowed down by a shortage of funds.

He said council was committing funds for the hostel upgrading project from its thin revenue base, as part of a new thrust to change the face of the country’s oldest town and living conditions of residents.

“The hostels upgrading exercise is part of our 100 day plan and our aim is to make sure families who live in the hostels are staying in hygienic conditions as we continue the thrust to modernise our city,” he said.

Hundreds of poor families have been living in squalid conditions at the Mucheke Hostels, raising the spectre of disease outbreak as families in the entire hostel were forced to share one toilet.

Some of the hostels being upgraded are located close to KwaVaMuzenda Cultural Heritage Site in Mucheke suburb where the late veteran nationalist and ex-Vice President Simon Muzenda used to live during the formative years of nationalist movements in Zimbabwe.

There were fears that the poor state of the Mucheke hostels were going to affect efforts to lure both domestic and foreign tourists to the KwaVaMuzenda Cultural Heritage Site that was designated a tourism site by Government last year.