Councillors slammed for dumping garbage at Mzuzu Council
Malawi’s flagship newspaper, The Daily Times, has lashed out at two overzealous ward councilors in Mzuzu who, on Thursday, dumped garbage at the offices of the director of the council.
The councilors, Lusubiro Mwangonde of Jombo ward and Gabriel Mwangulu of Chibavi West, tricked the secretariat when they borrowed wheel barrows on to return with loads of waste.
The two said they were only expressing their anger following the city’s failure to collect garbage.
“We first called the chief executive officer, Mcloud Kadammanja, asking him about the skip carrier which collects the refuse. But he told us that there was no fuel for the vehicle.
“But to our surprise, we saw vehicles of directors at the council ferrying their children to and from schools in town. Where did they get the fuel from,” said Mwangulu.
He said their aim was to let the directors appreciate the smell of the garbage and find solutions to clear the place.
However, Mzuzu City Council public relations officer, Karen Msiska, said the councilors know the Financial hiccups the council is passing thrrough and some of the services have been affected.
“The issue of delayed waste collection was a result of a problem at the current dumping site,” he said.
He said the council had only one skip carrier, therefore could not collect all the refuse at once.
However, The Daily Times, in its editorial comment, says it has reservations with the route the councilors have taken to force their secretariat to do what it is employed for.
“The councillors justify their bizarre way of ensuring compliance by saying that the directors said there was no fuel to run skip carriers, yet the directors have means to pick and drop their children in schools. We find this reasoning by the councillors very strange. The councillors have to appreciate that the technocrats have conditions of service. The fact that there is no fuel for skip carriers does not mean that life should come to a standstill for the directors,” says the comment in part.
The comment says what the councillors are missing is that it is their duty to guide the secretariat in coming up with innovative ways of collecting revenue for the city.
The editorial comment further says that one would have expected the councillors to collaborate with their secretariat to mobilise vendors and other traders in the city to pay their rates and market fees.
The comment concludes that it is high time the Mzuzu councillors and the secretariat came together to find practical solutions to financial woes dogging the council and not this zeal without wisdom.
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