By Marvellous Matswimbo
Bulawayo residents today took to the streets to protest against poor service delivery by the Bulawayo City Council.
The demonstration which was led by Bulawayo Progressive Residence Association (BPRA) saw residence coming from different parts of the city in unity into the Central Business District to raise their complaints to the local authorities.
In an interview, Sboniso mjibha said: “The city council has taken advantage of residents for a long time and we are tired of it. The worst part is that when we raise our issues in a peaceful way they don’t listen so we thought that this is the only way they will understand.”
“Where l come from there has been a burst sewage system for about three weeks now and they haven’t attended to it. Its putting us at risk as residence because we can contract cholera and other diseases and the local clinics do not even have medication to offer us”, she added
Another resident said in Ward 13 the service delivery is bad such that there is no proper housing for people and no proper toilets
“The situation in Ward 13 the situation is bad, there are no proper toilets and you find out that one toilet is shared by four households and people are squatting in small rooms which are divided by curtains and do not even have proper roofing yet they are being charged USD26 every month”, he said
The non-violent protest comprised mostly of the elderly women and man carrying cards and singing songs against the council’s poor service delivery.
Different messages where written on the cards and some read “No High Rates No”, “We demand Better Services”, “Proper Budget Consultation” and “No to corruption, the city is stinking and we want you to do right”.
Mandla Ndlovu, one of the protesters said “The city council is disrespecting residence and they can’t stand it anymore, there is litter everywhere, roads are a mess, there is no water not to talk about traffic lights that are not working and are causing accidents everywhere.”
“Its high time that the city council own up to their failures and do something about it, they spend time terrorizing vendors instead of providing good services to the residents, indeed we don’t have leadership here in Bulawayo”, he added.
The demonstration ended with residents dropping off their card in front of the Bulawayo City Council offices at the large city hall.