Gweru residents forced to repair roads

SOME residents of Zimbabwe’s third largest city, Gweru have taken it upon themselves to refurbish roads in their neighborhood as the local authority seems to be struggling to do so.

This is amid claims by the authorities that road refurbishment in the city is underway.

An internal report on service delivery notes that the local authority has only managed to dump heaps of gravel on the road sides but no roads have been repaired.

The service delivery inquiry report was compiled by a committee made up of councillors, members of the residents’ association and staff from the local authority.

According to the report, most roads in Gweru’s residential areas are now impassable, forcing locals to take action.

“The committee found out that only heaps of gravel were dumped and were never attended to and in some cases residents were spreading the heaps of gravel on their own,” the report reads in part.

The report further states, “The Town Clerk’s report on the above activity indicated that the majority of the roads were attended to; however, the committee established that the claim is not in conformity with what was on the ground”. 

It is further noted in the report that most roads in Ascot, Mkoba and Mambo suburbs are now impassable due to the gravel dumped on them. 

The report accuses Town Clerk, Elizabeth Gwatipedza of misrepresenting facts on the city’s state of roads in her report.

The service delivery inquiry report has unearthed a lot of irregularities in Gweru City Council’s affairs, which include failure to provide clean water, leading to a deadly typhoid outbreak.