Parly urges Treasury to fund urban infrastructure rehabilitation
MEMBERS of Parliament have urged government to set aside 2% of the national budget for the rehabilitation of dilapidated infrastructure in high-density suburbs throughout the country.
This came out in a motion introduced by Dzivaresekwa MP Edwin Mushoriwa on the state of infrastructure such as water, sewage pipes and roads.
Mushoriwa said lack of maintenance of the infrastructure had exposed residents to diseases such as cholera, dysentery and diarrhoea.
He said urban population growth was worsening the situation.
“Right now, the sewer system in Dzivaresekwa, Highfield, Vengere or Sakubva can no longer sustain the population that is within these suburbs. The provision of water is no longer possible. It is even worse when you look into the state of the roads. The roads were not meant for the volume of traffic that we now have,” Mushoriwa said.
Mount Pleasant MP Samuel Banda (MDC Alliance) said Harare was designed for about 500 000 people, yet it now has about three million people using the same facilities which have been there since time immemorial.
Audit reports from 2013 to 2017 by Auditor-General Mildred Chiri revealed that local authorities did not have modern equipment and technologies for sewer systems’ inspection and maintenance, resulting in recurrent pipe bursts.
Chiri said government was losing about US$194 million annually to poor sanitation practices.
Harare East MP Tendai Biti, who was recalled from Parliament on Wednesday by the People’s Democratic Party, also contributed to the motion, blasting government for failing to upgrade infrastructure 41 years after independence.
“We need to dismantle the permanent features of the Rhodesian apartheid State which was codified in the Land Legislation, in particular the 1987 ordinance, the 1930 Land Apportionment Act, Smith’s Tribal Trust Lands Act and present day Communal Lands Act.
“So, it is much more than urban regeneration. It is attending to the unfinished business of the liberation struggle. We have to destroy the outstanding abuse of colonisation,” Biti said.