Thursday, March 28, 2024

Lusaka cleaning as business becomes on stand still

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Some various parts of Lusaka being cleaned.
Some various parts of Lusaka being cleaned.
Some various parts of Lusaka being cleaned.
Some various parts of Lusaka being cleaned.
Some various parts of Lusaka being cleaned.
Women joining the cleaning exercise.
Some various parts of Lusaka being cleaned.
Women joining the cleaning exercise.
No handshakes: President Edgar Lungu avoiding shaking hands with Ministers Vincent Mwale and Sylvia Chalikosa and Lusaka Deputy Mayor Chilando Chitangala respectively prior to Lusaka cleaning exercise inspection.
A volunteer busy cleaning.
ZAF and ZP officers controlling the situation: traffic, crowd etc….
Sensitisation: a lady and minibus carrying a poster about cholera.
Cleaning
Zambia army officers briefing prior to starting cleaning and moving in cleaning.
ZAF and ZP officers controlling the situation: traffic, crowd etc….
Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya briefing Zambia army officer Brigadier General Jack Sinyangwe

Pictures Courtesy of Jean Mandela

49 COMMENTS

  1. Cholera ! Africans we are a very progressive lot……. I see some people are in protective wear while others are not…. what does that say about us ??

    • A proper Chimbwi no plan govt. Did the Council have to wait for a presidential directive and a cholera outbreak to clean the city? Better late than never and hopefully the street vending will now be regulated.

    • That’s good. At least sanity is been restored at last. As usual upnd has boycotted the cleaning exercise meanwhile they are the ones who brings cows in the city.

    • All this is taking place after people have already died from cholera. Next year we are going to be subjected to the same ritual, but only after more people would have died from the same epidemic. To us, it is life as usual. That’s how it has always been anyway. But is that the way it is supposed to be? Don’t we see that this PF government is short-changing us, that it is taking us for a dusty ride and, in the process, we are getting chocked and risk catching flu?

    • so basically don’t have the sense to keep their surroundings clean unless instructed by Government? Knuckle heads!

    • It’s a shame to still have wide open drainages in 2018. The same people who are cleaning are the ones who are going to get the disease because clearly only officials were given masks, boots and gloves

  2. Where was the Lusaka mayor when the capital city was getting that filthy? Does it really need our hard working president on the ground to clean the city?

    • Chanda donot be ignorant , its the President himself who even stopped removal of street venders , so he is too responsible even for those who have died , as this could have been avoided long ago.

    • Ba Edwin Hazulu. How does the president gets involved in your personal hygiene. Do you need the president to wash your hands after sheeting. You just sheet and leave the toilet and expect the president to tell you to wash your hands sure. Street vending is is there even in first world countries.
      What I expect the president to do is fire heath minister and the major after this exercise. They have let him down.

    • Ba oval head na ba mo chanda say you are the mayor and cadres like you under instructions from davis mwila of cause under special instructions from ECL to control public toilets,bus stations,packing lot levies in the cbd and markets as reward for your votes and mobilisation where will you get funds for gabage collection unblocking of drains and other municipal services.
      ECL knows he is has screwed up big time the chickens are coming home roost and Guys like you will defend as long as your gravy train is unhindered.

    • Edwin Hazulu,
      The president should not even dream of removing vendors from the streets. Some of us who voted for him were raised from funds made on the streets. We can call keep cattle.

  3. The ancestral home of cholera was India and Bangladesh. Now looking at the dirt and open sewers in Lusaka is very depressing. For Jonathan going around showing his ‘rodent like’ teeth is even more depressing.

  4. Just how do people manage to stay in such filth. Its clear that somewhere somehow leadership is filthy. I am not talking about our own homes but where the boma presence should be felt.
    I have never seen such dirt and yet people are trading there. Lets just wait for the bill for cleaning from some office.
    Street vending is terrible indeed. It wont take long before the city is filthed again. Watch the space.
    Disaster!

  5. Oh yes cleaning so that they can trade again in the same street and make it filthy again. Just how many times bane.
    Disaster!

  6. Thank you for your intervention Mr President. Long term plan is needed though. Lots of cities whether or not in developed world have 1 street designated for street vending with proper guidelines, structures & cleanliness & sometimes open only on specified days. A list can be developed by LCC for all those who want to participate & licenses issued. Preference should be given to those without market stands. This way filter roads for road like Lumumba can be big market place which operates say Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday & Thursday end to end with no permanent structures. This would guarantee both those inside & outside market business on certain days. It would also allow banning of street vending everywhere else & proper cleaning of road when market not in session. Decency will then come back…

    • Wrong advice. Street vending should just be banned outright. For as long as we have cadres overriding councils at markets and bus stations vending will be disorganized and socially unacceptable. This matter is complex and needs to be handled carefully but the root cause of all this scandal is simply the failure of successive governments to run the economy and create meaningful employment. Maybe independence came way too early before a simple school teacher understood the basics of running a country.

    • @Mega, it’s clear you don’t understand real situation on the ground & dynamics of Zambian economy being divided into formal & informal sector. If you’re part of formal sector you’ll obviously only see informal sector as being filthy & bad. But many Zambians live & have been raised through street vending & there is an opportunity to make it part of mainstream economy now. Where do you think all the people who are part of street vending economy will go if govt simply band street vending? It’s not time for emotional but rational thinking. Even the UK has Oxford & other streets where controlled street vending is permitted. God Bless Zambia

  7. I’m a frequent traveller to Zambia but I was appalled by how dirty, littered and disorganised your towns and cities are, shuuu compared to the rest of Southern Africa!! I notice that you don’t even have public toilets and bins in towns. Your councils should come and learn from us in SA but also naturally Zambians are very dirty as I have also seen in your homes. Even your roads have no signs and markings. Please change this as it reflects very badly on your country. Personally am not attracted to live in Zambia. Sharp madoda!

    • I am Zambian – you’re spot on Bongani. In fact, of all Sub Saharan Africa, Southern Africa is the most organised of all. However, Zambia seems to be that country embarrassing this region. Its a BIG shame!

  8. The dirtiest city in Zambia and Africa, they love to travel the world round why don’t the copy from other cleanest cities in Africa like Kigali and Windhoek, shame on them to be awakened by diseases, when they could have saved lives by doing the right thing. Disease, hunger and crime are the fruits of an evil government…’you shall know them by their fruits’ said our Lord

  9. Woking up when the water has reached your neck, nonsense. Did we actually think cholera will spare us when these rains?

  10. This is what happens when people are too lazy to think. What is needed are dumpsters and trash cans for the collection of refuse. For a city the size of Lusaka, we need special trucks designed to collect refuse, as opposed to using wheelbarrows, as I see here. Dear PF government, it is not true Patriotism to collect dirt with bare hands like that. That is courting death.

  11. Anti we don’t want a Tonga to rule over us we want, we want who….It is just like those who said we don’t want Jesu release for Judas. Where is the chitimukulu the writer he is missing in action, corruption, crime, hunger and disease are the real stories he should be writing about not writing about history aimed at protecting and evil regime at the expense of suffering majority.

  12. The sad reality is that, someone has been reporting for duty every day, for five days week – fifty-two weeks in a year; and yet sleeping on duty while drawing a hefty government salary at the end of each month, for twelve months in a year. How fair is that? Where is morality here? People are dying from cholera in Lusaka!

  13. If you’re too lazy to properly dispose trash,too lazy to clean diligently and too lazy to wash hands to avoid cholera is it any wonder you’re also damn poor? All I see above is a pattern of taking the road of least resistance cuz the pain of taking the straight and narrow road is damn too hard.You forget that both have a cost so lets do things the painful way like Rwanda-the cost of cholera is too high.

  14. The other sad reality is the overall system of waste management cannot handle the volume of garbage the city produces everyday.

    For now instance, the sudden pick up in cleaning this week will only shift the garbage to an overfilled land fill.

    We need to put in place an incinerator that can generate power from garbage. This is done in countries with real leadership, not Koswes.

  15. Iam quite impressed by Lusaka residents taking up this task as their own. However, Hygiene is not a once off exercise. That is why civilised cities have 24/7 waste disposal departments. Its not something that you ask volunteers to do once a year.

    • Warped minds. Under a normal functional society this job should be under an institution. That institution is the council.

  16. This cleaning should be made part of the normal business as usual. Meaning, declare 1 day in every quarter when these people should take up to streets to clean.
    Do this for the next 3 years, you will see Lusaka will become the cleanest town. That’s how you teach these marketers who just throw away things anywhere.And also increase awareness.

    If you only do this as a one-off exercise, Lusaka will be back to where it was in 3 months.

  17. This is supposed to be a routine mwebantu. Why cant we learn from our friends in Rwanda as every citizen participates in the cleaning exercise every THURSDAY.

    Great team effort on this one, only problem is that only a few are benefiting from MUKULA.

  18. Zambians are generally very filth people. This cholera which in the in city centre has come from people’s homes. We don’t need to be told by the government to keep clean.

  19. Those pictures are very depressing, that filth did not just fall from above.
    We truly have no leadership at all levels.

  20. Has anyone observed what is going on in the pictures. The so called leaders are wearing boots while the poor are using hands .I wonder how many people from these ended up on a cholera centre after this exercise . This shows that the PF only care about themselves and not the people they are meant to protect .Let us see Lungu use bear feet and hands to clean up this neglected market .

  21. Clearly it can be seen from the pictures that the greatest culprit in the chocking, not only Lusaka drainage, are plastics, plastic containers and disposable bottles whose distributors we all know about. Looking forward why cant Sin Tax to Companies that are packaging food and beverages in plastics, plastic containers and disposable bottles to an extent where they come up with lasting means to properly dispose of them or better still recycle them. It does not take senior government officials or the commander in chief with his security personnel to clean up filth from trading or vending places. Each one of us should ALWAYS BE HYGIENIC starting from our homes. This pandemic can easily spread to other Towns and cities in Zambia. I’m sure those old enough can remember what happened in 1991

  22. In of 42/42 We would do better with 22/22 cleaning trucks. We do not have fires everyday but we have litter all the time.

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