Tinaani Nyabereka
Gweru- Poor street lighting and dysfunctional traffic lights in the city of progress continue to pose threats to the community.
The development was confirmed by ward 3 councillor Martin Chivhoko during a full council meeting held recently.
Gweru continues to experience deteriorating service delivery provisions in areas such as water and sewer reticulation lighting, road infrastructure among other things.
“What is the environment committee doing about the issue of lights? We always hear about areas such as Senga, Mkoba and Athlone but we never heard about anyone talking of areas which don’t have streets lights. Are you doing anything to improve street lights in areas which don’t have?
“Areas such as wards 3 don’t have tower lights and people continue to be robbed and mugged at bus stops, early in the morning and even at night. What is council doing to address this issue? We need to prioritize the safety of residents,” said Chivhoko.
Environment, Works and Town Planning committee member, ward 17 councillor Tawanda Magidi said the finance committee had not disbursed much funding for the lighting project.
“You happen to be the finance committee chairperson, the keepers of money, you are crying but you didn’t give us money for the lights,” he said.
Ward 15 councillor Trust Chineni who happens to be the chairperson of the Environment Committee said the issues of lighting were being looked at.
“Yes, we as council we passed the resolution to light up all our streets but some areas still are lagging behind.
“Also on the issue of traffic lighting, we said we are going to install new lights and leave Zhang’s like that. We still await to hear management’s decision as they said they will look into it as soon as possible,” Chineni said.
Gweru Acting Town Clerk Livingstone Churu said the issue of traffic lights was at their desk as management and work was in progress to see its commencement.
Gweru council has gone close to decades without proper functional traffic lights and this continues to pose serious threats to motorists and pedestrians at intersections.
Council has however revealed plans to install new traffic lights, side by side with the old ones, whose case is in court.
Last month Gweru Council Spokesperson Vimbai Chingwaramurasee said arbitration was taking too long to deal with pending traffic lights issues.
“As council, we realised that arbitration was just taking too long and for us it is indeed of paramount importance to ensure that we have traffic lights in the city of Gweru.
“So we have since resolved to have parallel robots running whilst those under arbitration will not be touched.
“We are going to have those very soon. Our team is on the ground to see how much that will cost us,” she said.
