Women, youths bemoan poor service delivery in Gweru
By Delicious Mathuthu
Women and youths in Gweru are bemoaning the continuing poor service delivery in the city by the local authority, especially water provision, as residents resort to alternative sources to bridge the gap.
Several women and youths recently met in Gweru’s Mkoba suburb, in the Midlands Province, under the Young Women Christian Association (YWCA) Empowerment Hub, in partnership with the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD) Central Region, where they revealed that councils are still struggling to provide adequate services for residents, mostly affecting women and young people.
Speaking during the meeting, they said services such as water provision, maternity services, refuse management, street lighting, access to public toilets are some of the pressing challenges they face as a constituency.
On water provision, which has been a challenge for councils like Gweru for over a decade now, they said it should be a top priority for city fathers as residents are resorting to unsafe water sources.
“Our biggest challenge as women is water. We are tired of buckets on our heads on a daily basis and some of us are resorting to digging wells in our yards.
“Council should assist us in this because for a woman to live without water is not easy,” one of the participants from Gweru said.
She went on to say council is not always adhering to its water shedding schedule and are living in fear of possible serious cholera and typhoid outbreaks.
Yeukai Munetsi, a young woman also from Gweru and a Community Resource Monitor (CORA) with ZIMCODD, said City of Gweru should be proactive on climate change issues, put in place policies to avert its effects on the city.
Munetsi said Gweru is already facing water challenges, a situation likely to be worsened by low water levels in supply dams due to the El Nino drought.
Gweru City Mayor, Councilor Martin Chivhoko said the local authority is currently working on infrastructure to improve water supply.
“The Engineering Department has successfully connected a new transformer, a significant step towards enhancing the city’s water supply.
“Currently, the transformer is undergoing pump testing, promising improved water distribution once operational,” he said.
Another young woman, Nozipho Rutsate, who is Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) Midlands Chapter Chairperson, said Gweru needs an expansion in maternity services as pregnant women are now being bunched up at the Gweru Provincial Hospital.
“Maternity services in Gweru are now limited which is causing an influx at Gweru Provincial Hospital, and as a result standards have dropped,” she said.
Rutsate said there is need for the he local authority to revive maternity wards at council clinics such as that at Mkoba 1.
She said an ideal situation is for women to have maternity services near their areas of residence to prevent unnecessary mortalities and complications during travel for women in labour, where distance to access such services is longer.
On refuse management, Tafadzwa Makore, another participants in the meeting said illegal dumps are slowly becoming a permanent site in the city, especially in the high density suburbs partly owing to uncollected refuse.
On the other hand Gweru Councilor, Mercy Mangwanya, said most of these illegal dumps are fueled by ignorant residents who need education on the dangers of dumping waste in undesignated sites.
She appealed to fellow women, especially young women nursing babies that they should desist from dumping baby diapers everywhere, which are the main feature in these illegal dumps.
On public lighting, the women said there is need to revive street lights in medium and low density suburbs and timely repairs of tower lights in the high density areas.
The women also said there is need for more free public toilets in the city centre and business centres as desperate residents are resorting to open urination and defacation like in alleyways and corridors which is soiling the image of the city.
The meeting, which was mainly to train women and youths empowerment hubs on economic governance, and highlight progress made on existing ones, also conducted a constitutional awareness session on Public Finance Management and the Bill of Rights.
