Deputy Mayor of Malawi’s Blantyre City Council, Councillor Joseph Magwinja has said his municipality is experiencing a number of problems including escalating number of vendors and is looking to learn ways of tackling such problems from their Harare counterparts.
Speaking after meeting Harare Mayor, Councillor Bernard Manyenyeni, in the capital on Tuesday, Magwinja said they are on a mission to learn on key areas of police works, waste management, local revenue issues and infrastructural development with regards to local governance.
“We are here to strengthen relations between Harare and Blantyre which already exist. We are also here to learn on certain issues and we want to seek knowledge from our big brothers, on how to run our local authority.
“We haven’t been doing well for our rapidly growing city and waste management remains one of our main challenges. Out of all the waste generated, we manage to collect half of it. Informal areas are not very accessible and we have insufficient tools for refuse storage in these informal areas and our refuse trucks are very old,” he said.
Ironically, Magwinja said they want to also see how they can deal with the escalating number of vendors in Blantyre from Harare City Council, who are struggling to deal with thousands of vendors resulting in a cat and mouse chase game between the police and vendors.
Blantyre, just like Harare, is aiming towards attaining a world class city status by 2025 and Magwinja believes maximum corporation can accelerate growth between the two cities.
“We also look forward to learn on how to deal with vendors form Harare since we share a common problem. Vendors in Blantyre are the same as we have seen them here but we are happy with how Harare has dealt with the issue thus far,” added Magwinja.
His counterpart, Mayor Manyenyeni said the two local authorities will benefit from sharing information on good local authority governance and pledged to assist the Malawian capital local authority .
