PRISCA MANYIWA-MASUKU

MIRROR REPORTER

KWEKWE – Kwekwe, the fifth largest city council in Zimbabwe is operating without a mechanic to f ix its fleet of cars and road maintenance vehicles, a full council meeting heard on Friday.

The news astounded councillors who were told that as a result, council outsourced vehicle maintenance to Croco Motors for the slightest fault. Road maintenance work is crippled with only one grader out of four working. The meeting also heard council works yard is littered with dysfunctional graders and vehicles while council is struggling to service roads due to inadequate equipment.

“Only one grader is working, three are down. We have three graders that are not working and this a very bad situation for our roads because we have a vast city. We always have breakdowns and recently a vehicle had to remain parked for two weeks because it had no battery. “This is crippling our service delivery, do we have our own mechanic or it’s a case of always spending money outside to service our vehicles,” said councilor Alex Senge of ward 1.

Acting town clerk Engineer John Mhike said council has not been able to afford an inhouse skilled mechanic. “It has been two years since we had a Diesel and plant f itter (dpf) and an electrician. Those people are highly sought after and they are highly paid. They hardly stay with us because we cannot afford their high salaries,” said Mhike.

Councilor Solomon Matsa told management to sacrifice for proper service delivery by hiring skilled mechanics. The mayor, Albert Zinhanga said council should consider hiring graduate trainees which it can afford. “There are many jobless graduates in those fields who are sitting at home and council should consider hiring such as graduate trainees,” said Zinhanga.