Municipal workers die cleaning sewage truck

HARARE: Two men clearing and disposing of human waste within the City of Harare’s public utilities were poisoned and suffocated earlier this week after they dumped excrement along a major river on the edge of the city.

The men were emptying a machine, ironically known as a “honey sucker”, which extracts human waste from blocked or overfilled drains and septic tanks, when they collapsed and died from chemical poisoning, according to police spokesman Paul Nyathi.

He said the two men, Patrick Sibanda, 36, and Mathias Machingu, 42, may have been overwhelmed by poisons in the waste water.

“The two died while cleaning their honey sucker after they had disposed of the sewage,” he said.

“The assistant entered the machine and did not come out. This prompted his colleague to go in to check on his whereabouts, but unfortunately he also met the same fate as he also suffocated.”

Many dwellings outside the city centre and nearby older suburbs still use septic tanks. Rules about how many can be installed per hectare have been ignored in recent years.

There is a stench in several expensive suburbs, which city workers say is caused by too many septic tanks.

Much of Harare’s drainage and water supply infrastructure has not been maintained or updated for the last 30 years.

Some estimates from city water experts are that half the people living in Harare don’t have access to fresh water.

Within weeks of the first case of cholera in the city in 2008, more than 100 000 people contracted the disease and more than 5 000 died.

The UN said cholera emerged in the city as people without fresh water in the densely populated suburbs drank from wells they dug in their small gardens.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won 38 out of 46 wards in local government elections in 2013.

Elias Mudzuri, the mayor of Harare, had massive support from city residents after he won elections overwhelmingly in 2002 on an MDC ticket, but both he and other councillors were regularly arrested and beaten up in public by the police and Zanu-PF supporters.

Newspapers revealed that in the past few years, many ZanuPF leaders regularly failed to pay their taxes to the city or settle water and electricity bills.

The government owes the city billions of dollars.