Garbage collectors: The unsung heroes that keep Bulawayo clean

Raymond Jaravaza, Showbiz Correspondent
IT’S not a job for the faint-hearted and maybe there are a number of reasons many people are reluctant to take up garbage collection as a career, but for Itai Munetsi, the unholy odour from household trash has become part and parcel of his daily shifts, collecting garbage around Bulawayo’s suburbs.

The stigma and sometimes not-so-pleasant name calling that goes with the job has only made the 26-year-old grow a thick skin.

He wakes up at 4am every weekday and joins four colleagues – including the truck driver – for daily rounds collecting garbage in the western suburbs, a job he has held for the last three years.

“It’s not the most glamorous job but somebody has to do it otherwise the residents of Bulawayo would be swimming in trash and diseases such as cholera will wreak havoc and kill people in their thousands.

“My shifts start around 5am, but I’ve to be up an hour earlier and every day we work in a different suburb using our seven-tonne truck. Our truck is contracted to the Bulawayo City Council and after finishing our rounds in each suburb, we load the refuse into the bigger trucks owned by BCC, which in turn dump the garbage at Ngozi Mine,” Munetsi tells Saturday Leisure.

A few years back, BCC called on members of the community who own trucks to hire out their vehicles to the local authority for refuse collection in high density suburbs.

“City of Bulawayo invites interested members of the community owning trucks ranging between three tonnes to eight tonnes to submit their details to the Town Clerk for consideration and possible hire of their vehicles for refuse removal in high density suburbs. The project will involve refuse removal from the households and streets to designated sites within the city,” the Town Clerk, Christopher Dube said at the time.

And that’s how Munetsi and dozens of other garbage collectors found themselves joining Bulawayo’s unsung heroes that help keep the city clean.

But it’s a back-breaking job that some Bulawayo residents take for granted by dumping refuse in open fields and sometimes in the streets, the single father-of-one complains.

“We love our job as refuse collectors but sometimes it’s disheartening when residents dump their trash in undesignated places just because they know that there are people like us who will pick up after them.

“It makes our job easier when residents leave their refuse outside their gates on a particular day when we do rounds in their suburbs instead of dumping trash in open fields. For instance, we do our rounds in Emakhandeni suburb on Monday starting early in the morning and by 11am we will be loading the refuse into a BCC truck at a designated area near Luveve Road,” explained Munetsi.

Before BCC called on truck owners to lease their vehicles for refuse collection, the local authority had a fully-fledged garbage collection department with full time employees, who worked around the city’s suburbs on a daily basis.

“I don’t think it’s fair to say we took over the jobs of BCC workers, I would like to believe that we are just complementing what they have been doing all these years,” he said.

Growing up in the high-density suburb of Pumula East, now 35-year-old Mthandazo Ndlovu says he remembers being fascinated by garbage collectors in their blue overalls, hanging precariously on their huge trucks.

“We used to call them omabhimu but it wasn’t the wisest idea to let them hear you call them that. They were very intimidating guys who could pick up a huge metal dust bin with one hand, toss the trash into a moving truck with such ease; I grew up admiring their work,” reminisced Ndlovu.

The garbage collectors of that time had unwritten rules of their own that any right-thinking Bulawayo resident knew never to break if they wanted their refuse picked up.

“We had to make sure that heavy things like bricks never found their way into dust bins, otherwise the guys would attempt to pick it up, realise that ‘unwanted’ trash was in the dust bin and they would leave there right on the spot and move to the next house.

“If your trash was in a plastic bag, you had to make sure that the bag was strong enough to hold the contents together otherwise if it ripped apart, the garbage collector would simply leave the trash on the ground next to your gate,” he said.

Ndlovu remembers that the ultimate rule was for the garbage collector to never hear you call them by that derogatory name, omabhimu, otherwise your refuse would not be picked up for a month as punishment.

“Those guys knew which households had broken the rules and they had their own ways of punishing the offenders,” he said.

In those days, fewer women were into garbage collection and this is still the case today.

Emakhandeni suburb ward 11 councillor Pilate Moyo explained that women are not into the kind of garbage collection that involves trucks but are into picking illegally dumped refuse from undesignated areas.

“Garbage collection using trucks involves a lot of heavy lifting so the job is usually left to men. But when the city council hires part time workers to pick up trash in open fields and on the streets, more women tend to come forward,” said Moyo.

For garbage collector Munetsi, his parting words were a bit of advice to Bulawayo residents on how they must treat their waste.

“Whenever one is tempted to dump refuse in open fields or on the streets, they must remember that it’s everyone’s duty to keep our city clean and not just the job of the garbage collector,” he said. — @RaymondJaravaza

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