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Leonard Ncube, Victoria Falls Reporter

THE country’s prime resort, Victoria Falls City, is taking the lead in ensuring a litter-free environment around its surroundings as more organisations and residents embrace regular clean-up interventions.

Various stakeholders, led by tourism and hospitality players have embraced the National Clean-up exercise introduced by Government four years ago and have made it a daily routine to pick litter and clean all accessible corners.

President Mnangagwa in 2018 declared the first Friday of each calendar month a National Environment Cleaning Day as Government moves to ensure the country has sustainable environment management and waste disposal systems.

Since then, the country has been religiously conducting the national clean-up campaign and, in some areas, behaviour change is evident as community members have embraced sustainable ways of managing waste.

Each ministry was made to pledge to play a role in the national clean-up exercise but some sections of the country, especially along major roads are a cause for concern. The Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development is expected to clean along the roads.

A news crew has noticed on numerous occasions loads of garbage along roads presumably dumped by travelling public. The situation is dire especially around Hwange town as litter comprising mostly of plastic paper and bottles, is scattered around, adding to land, air and water pollution.

Tourists who travel to Victoria Falls via Hwange have expressed concern about the litter situation, which they say is an eyesore. The situation is different in the resort where each day there are teams from different companies picking litter.

In Victoria Falls, stakeholders have formed the Pristine Victoria Falls Society (PVFS), a community-based movement set up in October 2021 with the objective of making the city the cleanest in Africa. This is also in line with the local authority’s vision for a smart city status contained in its strategic plan being worked on.

Through PVFS, roads leading into the city from as far as the airport, and going to various hotels and leisure places are litter free.

Each organisation has pledged and adopted a section of the city, which they clean every month, but have expanded this into a daily routine.

Tourism executive Mr Mike Davis who is one of the PVFS leaders said the goal is to collectively take responsibility for clearing all litter within the city limits and along the airport and border roads and keeping the environment clean at all times.

He said Victoria Falls is the custodian of one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, National Park and a World Heritage Site, which are all sensitive and keeping them clean provides vast marketing leverage. Environmental Management Agency provincial manager for Matabeleland North, Mrs Chipo Mpofu-Zuze, commended the Victoria Falls community for keeping the city clean.

She challenged other communities and stakeholders to emulate for effective environment protection.

“We really appreciate communities that have embraced the clean-up exercise as this is in line with the declaration made by President Mnangagwa and the Environmental Act Chapter 27 where one of the principles is stakeholder engagement,” said Mrs Zuze Mpofu.

“If we see communities doing that, we appreciate and encourage such practices. We appreciate what Victoria Falls stakeholders have done over the years as they have taken it upon themselves to allocate each other sections of the city and we want this to be a learning area for other centres to know that it is doable than to wait for local authorities to lead the clean-up,” she said.

Mrs Mpofu-Zuze said EMA will continue raising awareness to mobilise communities to form waste management teams.

-@ncubeleon