Local Government and National housing Minister Ignatius Chombo is desperately needed to move in to act on Gwanda Council’s perennial failure to handle the fire service.
Local residents headed by the prolific Bekezela Fuzwayo have opened up a dossier proving how the council is “useless” in dealing with disasters and they are now appealing to government for urgent help. At least 10 people have been killed by Gwanda fires in a series of accidents  the council could have easily averted but allowed to happen.
Wrote Fuzwayo, “in the worst incident to date, a couple of years back about ten lives were gruesomely lost when a truck and a smaller vehicle had a head on collusion a few kilometres out of town and, as always, all our Emergency Services could do was to hopelessly stand by and watch while people and the vehicles burnt to ashes.
“It is with these continuous disasters and failures by our council in mind that as residents of Gwanda then find ourselves living in fear with no guarantee that our lives and properties are safe in the hands of our council’s emergency services department.
“We are wondering how many more lives and how much more property should be destroyed before we can all say “enough is enough” and bring this to an end.
“Of major disappointment is that all these losses happen as our council continues declaring that it has acquired state of the art fire fighting equipment and that the staff has been provided with the best training available.
“Residents have been shocked time and again to see our fire fighting teams arrive to the scene of a fire failing to operate the fire fighting equipment and/or showing a complete lack of skill and knowledge on how to fight the fire.
“After the recent fire at Power Sales, as Residents representatives in the company of some key stakeholders from the town, we invited council to a round table to discuss our preparedness to these disasters with a hope that a collective strategy would be formulated therefrom but council was not prepared to have the dialogue and dismissed the invitation as being unwarranted.
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