By Staff Reporter
Chitungwiza City Council says it is going to meet with a view to coming up with a resolution that will enable removal of illegal vendors from the streets as a way of trying to avoid cholera outbreak.
Owing to high levels of poverty and unemployment in the country, most people have gone into vending as a means of earning a living.
Speaking during the tour of a cholera treatment camp in St. Mary’s, Chitungwiza Mayor Gift Tsverere only illegal vendors will be targeted subject to the full council resolution.
“We are not targeting all vendors but illegal vendors who are operating at undesignated areas but this will come out through a council resolution and so we are going to sit as a full council tomorrow (Thursday) or a day after tomorrow (Friday) to deliberate on this issue,” he said.
However, residents are of the view that removing vendors is not the solution to curbing cholera but that poor service delivery was to blame and must be improved.
“Removing vendors is not the solution to the problem we are facing we need a holistic approach to this problem, vendors are not the root of cholera but poor service delivery.
“The council has to provide us with clean water and better service delivery rather than shifting the blame to vendors who are trying to make a living,” aid Marvellous Khumalo.
About 14 suspected cases of cholera have been reported in Chitungwiza and out of that number, only 2 cases have been confirmed.
According to Chitungwiza City Council, the cholera cases reported in the town council can be traced back to Harare and that they are working closely with Harare to find solutions.
“We are working so closely with the City of Harare and we suspect that this epidemic started from Harare and thousands of cases have been reported there while here our cases are very few compared to Harare,” said Dr Kasu.
Meanwhile, MDC Alliance leader Nelson Chamisa toured affected areas in Harare and said cholera is an ancient disease which does not have space in the modern society.
“It is disheartening that our people are still being affected by cholera in this day and age, this disease does not have space in our modern society,” said Nelson Chamisa.
