City of Harare Praises Waste Collection Gains as Geo Pomona Takes Over

The City of Harare has praised visible waste collection improvements under Geo Pomona Waste Management (image source)

The City of Harare has publicly commended visible improvements in municipal waste collection since Geo Pomona Waste Management assumed the service contract, with acting Town Clerk Pakhamile Mabhena leading a council delegation to inspect the company’s facilities and operations this week.

Officials highlighted specific gains during the tour, including an encapsulation unit said to have reduced nuisance at the former dumpsite, a sorting plant and a hazardous-waste section, with the long-promised waste-to-energy component described as the next phase in the project’s rollout. Mr. Mabhena told the delegation that continued deployment of equipment would be required to sustain progress, while urging the public to support the new operational model.

Eyewitness accounts from city neighborhoods paint a mixed picture. Several residents and street vendors in high-traffic precincts report cleaner streets and more regular curbside pickups compared with the previous year, describing fewer overflowed bins and reduced roadside dumping during early morning hours. One vendor in Mbare said collection used to be “a lottery” but now refuse trucks arrive more predictably, easing daily sanitation burdens. Other residents, however, say improvements are uneven across suburbs and warn that service reliability still falters in outlying wards where trucks are less frequent.

Geo Pomona executives and municipal sources say the firm has invested in fleet capacity and modern sorting infrastructure, a move that follows media reports of the company deploying dozens of new refuse trucks as part of a broader clean-up plan for Harare earlier this year. Company managers emphasise scale and equipment as core to the turnaround, arguing that visible cleanliness is the first metric of success.

Independent waste-management experts and civic watchdogs welcome the visibility of improvements but press for transparent performance metrics. A Harare-based environmental engineer said sustained success depends not only on trucks and sorting plants but also on contract governance, punctual payment streams to the operator, and robust monitoring of the new landfill cells and hazardous-waste handling to prevent long-term pollution risks. The engineer warned that service contracts can degrade if municipal payments lapse or if oversight is weak, producing short-lived improvements that revert when funding or political will wanes.

Civic groups are calling for published collection schedules, fleet maintenance logs and third-party audits of landfill remediation work. Improved waste collection can reduce health risks and restore urban amenity, but without independent verification and equitable service roll-out, gains risk being cosmetic and short-term. The City’s next steps — publishing contract terms, performance data and environmental safeguards for landfill and hazardous-waste handling — will determine whether the reported improvements endure.