STAFF WRITER
Harare City Council’s road rehabilitation programme failed to engage into second gear this year with the municipal authority only managing to rehabilitate 11 percent of their targeted 130 kilometres.
This comes as most of city’s roads remain in a state of disrepair.
City council authorities attribute their failure to make significant road works strides down to meagre allocations from the Zimbabwe National Road Authority (ZINARA) for road rehabilitation programmes.
“This year we had targeted to rehabilitate 130km but we have only did 15km, we had also targeted to maintain 400km but we only managed 297km,” Finance and Development Committee Chairperson Cllr Tichaona Mhetu said during the presentation of the 2022 council budget statement this week.
“This sector relies heavily on the ZINARA funds and we have received ZWL$ 198.9million, out of an allocation of ZWL$483 million which is still inadequate given the capital-intensive nature of the works. The state of our roads remain deplorable. The poor performance of this programme is attributed to late disbursement of funds and price variations caused by distortions in the market. We always request for more funds from ZINARA but ZINARA has not responded positively.”
Meanwhile, a high density house in Mbare is now expected to pay an average equivalent of USD$23.15 a month while low density house (Mabelreign) will now fork out an equivalent of USD$77.30.
Currently a high density suburb is paying an average of ZWL$1735 and will pay ZWL$2387 in January using the current interbank rate, an increase of 38 percent.
An average high density bill is calculated using five cubic metres of water costing ZWL$615, sewage at ZWL$400, refuse at ZWL$778 and property tax at ZWL$594, totalling $ZWL1735.
Five cubic meters of water is equivalent to 25 times 200 litre drums.
Those in the low density suburbs will pay an average ZWL$7630 up from ZWL$4558, an increase of 67 percent.
The average low density bills is calculated using five cubic meters of water at ZWL$820, sewage at ZWL$520, refuse at ZWL$1112 and property tax at ZWL$5158 giving a total of ZWL$7630.
