Waste management deal kick starts

Source: Waste management deal kick starts | The Herald

Acting Harare mayor Councillor Stewart Mutizwa

Blessings Chidakwa

Municipal Reporter

Feasibility studies for the waste-to-energy Pomona dump-site deal between Harare City Council and German investor, GeoGenix BV set to improve waste management and increase power supply will commence in earnest in the next few days.

Acting Harare Mayor councillor Stewart Mutizwa yesterday said a Memorandum of Understanding has since been signed while an international consultant will start doing the feasibility studies this coming week.

“The Pomona project is going ahead and it has the Cabinet and council approval. Anytime from next week the people will be on the ground to start the work.

“The number one aspect on our MOU is that we are going to undertake the quantities and quality of the energy that we are going to generate,” he said.

Mayor Mutizwa said the partner is coming with resources that will see council improving in terms of how waste is managed.

“We are going to do waste to energy and also to rehabilitate the dump-site itself so that the dumping areas will be cleared so far as it stands it is very difficult to dump at Pomona. We want to do the proper waste management and rehabilitation,” he said.

“We want to make proper value addition out of the waste that is being generated into our communities. All this long we have just been dumping and leaving it there, but it was also finding its way back into the community. That is one area we want to solve by eradicating and making sure we can produce power from the waste.”

The mayor said this was a very unsolicited bid.

“We flighted a tender for Pomona rehabilitation five years back and it has been in and out failing to find an investor, now we are happy we finally got one,” he said.

He said the council was also going to improve on door to door collection by making sure vehicles were maintained and having consistency on door to door delivery.

Acting town clerk Mr Mabhena Moyo said the feasibility studies will be conducted by a reputable international consultant at a cost to be paid by their partners.

GeoGenix BV representative Mr Mauro Bianchi who met council officials last month said the project would have a positive impact on Harare as going green was the way to go.