Sweeping the streets in Newlands

The Newlands area in Harare was a hive of activity on Friday with many of the local companies pulling together in true proud community spirit to clean up the unpleasant and polluted streets in the shopping centre.

There was a buzz in the air that made me feel proud to be Zimbabwean. One man helping with the clearing up operation bellowed out to his colleagues “come on Harare, let’s go”.

Staff from companies like Deloittes, Rio Tinto and AA Zimbabwe could be seen wearing their company T-shirts, sweeping the streets, repainting faded curbs and street markings. The City of Harare had been persuaded to deliver a bright orange skip into which volunteers dumped mounds of waste. At the Newlands Post Office an employee of Deloittes was overheard asking the Post Master if he had remembered to bring in 200lts of water so that they could wash their walls with a power cleaner.

It was obviously Newlands lucky day, because a City of Harare refuse truck was also seen collecting rubbish from our office block.

We hope this effort from the local community will energise the City of Harare to continue where the volunteers left off. Especially since their website claims that the Department’s mission is to “To prevent ill-health among the population of Zimbabwe through community education and regulatory mechanisms, to promote a health living and working environment, and to safeguard community health and quality of life.”

We at Kubatana say “Thanks, well done and keep the community spirit going!”

City of Harare refuse trucks do exist!

This entry was posted on September 20th, 2010 at 2:10 pm by Vanessa Evershed and is filed under Activism, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.