Edward Mukaratirwa
Mukaratirwa’s
challenge as he takes over Masvingo
Theresa Takafuma
Masvingo City Council’s new acting town clerk Edward
Mukaratirwa is probably the man who will oversee the long-awaited completion of
the Mucheke Trunk Sewer Project which remains stalled six years behind
schedule.
Mukaratirwa assumed his new role on September 01 this year
following the retirement of Adolf Gusha who had served in that capacity for 15
years.
Mukaratirwa acknowledges the ‘legacy’ issues associated with
the previous management which he has been part of, the same management which
presided over the botched project.
With 18 years’ experience working in local authorities,
Mukaratirwa’s capability to handle the pressure which comes with the city’s top
job will be put to test. The city is faced by many service delivery
shortcomings including inadequate water supplies and unreliable refuse
collection schedules.
In a wide ranging interview with TellZim News, Mukaratirwa
shed some light on some of his service delivery priorities, saying he respected
residents’ huge expectations for change under his management.
Who is Mukaratirwa the
man?
He is 42 years of age, and is a civil engineer.
He did his primary and secondary education in Gutu district,
finishing his advanced level at Gutu High School in 1996.
He then enrolled at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) in 1997
for a Bachelor of Science honors degree in civil engineering, and graduated in
2001.
Mukaratirwa joined Gweru City Council in September 2001 as a
water engineer until June 2002 when he joined Gutu Rural District Council the
following month as district engineer, a position which he held until September
2006.
In October 2006, Mukaratirwa became Gutu RDC acting Chief
Executive Officer (CEO) until February 2011 when he left and joined Masvingo
City Council in March the same year as the deputy city engineer.
He was in the same post until August 30 this year when he
assumed his current position as acting town clerk.
The Mucheke Trunk Sewer
project
The Mucheke Trunk Sewer project dates back to 2012 when the
then Masvingo mayor, the late Femius Chakabuda, confirmed in one interview that
work on the project was already underway and was expected to be complete by
2013.
This project is probably the biggest blight on both council
management and councilors who were in office that time because seven years
later, the project remains uncompleted. The deep trenches have become a hazard
to man and to the environment, and many of the fibrous pipes still lie
unattended in the open veld; some of them being vandalised.
With the expansion of the city partly due to the growing
peri-urban settlement of Victoria Ranch, council realised the need to upgrade the
sewer system which last received such attention in the late 1990s.
Mukaratirwa was already deputy city engineer when the Mucheke
Trunk Sewer project started, and there have been numerous twists and turns as
to why to this day it has not been completed.
Mukaratirwa says this is one of the very first projects he
would want to see completed as a matter of urgency, seeing that it has been
hanging in the balance for seven years. He says from the technical advice that council
got, the sewer line will be completed in three years’ time.
“As council, we resolved to mobilise internal resources
for the completion of the project. We will also use funds allocated by government
through devolution to do the work,” Mukaratirwa said.
“We also plan to approach Victoria Ranch residents
through the land developers to make them contribute a levy towards the completion
of the sewer line since they are the direct beneficiaries of the project.
Whatever happens there (at Victoria Ranch) affects us so it’s only fair to
engage them. We have a council resolution to that effect,” said
Mukaratirwa.
He said council bought pipes for the project from Turnall in
Bulawayo a few years back, but has not been able to transport them due to the
cost, but a recent disbursement of RTGS$624 000 from government will go towards
that.
“The $624 000 we received from government is all going towards
the transportation of the pipes we bought. We expect the tender process to be
completed by end of October and the transportation to start in November through
to December,” Mukaratirwa said.
“Work on the ground will probably start at the end of
the rainy season and by then, we hope all the materials required for the
completion of the first phase will be in place,” he said.
Assuming that work on the ground will start early 2020,
project’s completion will be 10 years behind schedule.
The initial contractor who won tender failed to complete the
project after telling council that he had underestimated the cost of the work
despite council confirming that it had paid him US$2 million.
He is reported to have demanded a further $2.5 million from
council, after which council then cancelled the contract.
Masvingo City Council in 2015 advertised in the media its
intention to borrow US$1.7 million for the completion of the project, and after
getting the nod to borrow, council confirmed that work was to commence soon
afterwards.
Former town clerk Gusha is on record admitting that council
had not done the feasibility study prior to the start of the project, and
council had to engage a South African consultant for the study. This raised eyebrows
as to how the tender process was conducted in the first place.
Council also borrowed US$900 000 from NSSA for the same
project, with the later pledging another US$1.7 million subject to government
approval, but still the project remained dormant.
Some residents recently complained that they suspected
council had increased bills behind their backs as part of desperate efforts to
raise new funding for the project.
In 2017, council spent $500 000 on vehicles for deputy directors
and what they termed ‘other uses’, a development which caused serious
disagreements between councillors and management.
Water situation
The expansion of the city has further worsened the water
situation as the city is currently supplying only 30 megalitres a day instead
of the required 48 megalitres due to many factors including load shedding.
Mukaratirwa says council has completed the technical feasibility
analysis for the scheduled water augmentation project.
“The consultant we engaged has completed the financial
feasibility analysis and will present to council management in the first week
of October. The consultant will then add the management’s feedback on the
report and by end of November we will be having both the technical and
financial feasibility reports.
“Both these reports will help us look for money for the
water augmentation project, and by year end, we will be going around looking
for partners. We also want to lobby government to give the project a national
project status so that we can look for funding even beyond our borders,”
he said.
Load shedding, on the other hand, has been one of the
unforeseen challenges that hit council this year. Mukaratirwa says going the
solar way could save the city from the short-term water woes, adding however
that going the solar way is very costly.
“The water treatment station requires a 200kva of power to
run and the solar system needed for that costs approximately US$2.5 million. We
just did a rough estimate but in our 2020 financial year, we have included fees
for a consultant to do a feasibility study on that,” he said.
Mukaratirwa admitted that there were parts of the city that
have gone for over two weeks without running water because load shedding worsened
from only three hours a day to around 11hours a day at Bushmead Water Works.
He said that through council’s engagement with power company ZESA,
the situation might improve starting this week as per the latter’s promise.
Refuse collection
Council recently flighted a tender invitation to private local
transporters who are willing to be contracted by council for refuse collection,
but Mukaratirwa says he is disappointed by the response.
The council’s refuse collection fleet has suffered mainly
from overuse, and council intends to beef up the fleet by purchasing a truck or
two in the 2020 financial year.
“Our trucks are suffering from overuse and we wanted
communities to play a role in refuse collection hence the tender invitation.
The response we got was underwhelming therefore we are planning to engage them
at both association and individual levels,” Mukaratirwa said.
Mukaratirwa said collection of refuse in the CBD where most
of the economic activities happen will continue, as well as at schools during
the school terms.
Inherited problems
The previous council is known for blaming predecessors for
most of the problems faced but for Mukaratirwa, stepping into the shoes of a
man who has been town clerk for 15 years entails dealing with many ‘legacy’
issues.
Most, if not all of the service delivery issues he needs to
address have been troubling the city for years and residents can only hope that
he too will not spend most of his time in office quenching fires started by his
predecessors.
