How not to build a world class city

24 Apr, 2016 - 00:04 0 Views
How not to build a world class city Sunday Mail

The Sunday Mail

Gerald Dehwe
On Thursday April 21, at around 8:45am I was confronted by uncouth behaviour from a City Parking marshal at Samora Machel Parkade, Harare.

The behaviour did not only expose an unbecoming attitude at the parking lot, but a bigger problem at the top levels in Harare City Council.

Through my employer, I am a paid up vehicle tenant at this parkade, which — ironically — is situated opposite the main offices of Zimbabwe whose name is derived from a great man in the country’s history — Munhumutapa.

Adjacent to it, you find Parliament building and the Anglican Cathedral, key institutions in regulation of all facets of Zimbabwe’s moral worthiness.

Then a stone’s throw away is First Street Mall, a symbolic structure in Zimbabwe’s Independence.
But amid these important buildings is the Samora Machel Parkade, which I presume is run by Harare City Council through City Parking and can provide a thesis topic for the academia as a case study on how to insult motorists in modern day Zimbabwe.

Of late, the electronic system that gives access to vehicles entering and exiting the parkade has been removed, with allegations it was attached by creditors.

Well, the failure by the Harare City Council to honour its obligations and ironic penchant to disconnect water for customers who find themselves in the same predicament is none of my business.

But on this particular day, a certain woman at the Kwame Nkrumah entrance had placed a plastic cone to stop vehicles from entering the parkade for reasons best known to her. As I stopped behind the cone, the woman — dressed in a pair of blue trousers, a matching shirt and a jersey with a City Parking logo — who probably had her own frustrations, thought she had found the right candidate to vent her issues on.

Sorry madam, that was a misjudgement and you had just invited a baptism of fire because this was the fourth time in less than two months I had been exposed to similar insults; to the extent of being followed to the parking bay where my name is visible and being asked: “Sorry boss, but munofanira kunge muchi paka muno here?”

On this particular day, without even the courtesy to allow for an exchange of greetings as is normal in our culture, this uncivilised woman simply said “Asi window rako harivhurike”, to which I lowered it before she continued “ndiwe ani?”

At first I thought it was a joke, but she again continued in the rude tone and demanded to know who I was.
“Urikuramba wakanditarisa asi hausikundinzwa.”

At that moment I asked: “What kind of questions are you asking?”
It was then she went into tantrums and declared I would not access the parkade.

I produced my electronic parking tag, advised her I was a tenant, gave her my reserved packing bay number and told her not to talk to me since the only system I was accountable to was the electronic device which gives me entry and exit into the parking lot.

There was a nasty exchange of words with the woman who openly said the tag was meaningless to her, but I maintained she had approached me rudely and should talk to her superiors to reinstall the electronic system to avoid confronting paid-up tenets daily.

Further, I told her if their new system involved verifying tenants personal details, then there was need for a polite way of doing so, or a notice at the entrance or exit point advising tenants that they may be subject to being asked to give such information.

I told her without such notices and because of her rude interventions I was in no mood to provide my personal details and that she was free to follow me where I park my vehicle.

This woman must learn some public relations because she was manning the “front office” of one of City Parking or Harare City Council’s cash cows.

It was evident she was determined to continue the fight had it not been that my vehicle had blocked other motorists who were demanding passage.

She gave in and opened the way.
I refuse to be a stress releasing object of some disgruntled employee annoyed by a system where she has to verbally ask who is who, manually take down registration numbers of vehicles entering or exiting and fail to account which vehicle is still within the building because there is another entrance or exit points along Samora Machel Avenue.

She should take that anger to her bosses, who at that time were possibly sitting on leather chairs in air conditioned offices with cups of coffee after driving to work in luxury top-of-the-range vehicles from their company-bought houses whilst forgetting to run a simple parkade.

I never experienced this uncivilised behaviour with the guys who operated under Easipark who were resident there and very cordial with tenants.

In the 21st century we still have such pre-medieval manual systems being used by a city, capital city for that matter, with an annual budget of tens of millions and dreaming world class status by 2025. My foot!

A manual system to record the exit and entry of hundreds of vehicles which have multiple access?
And let me not bother asking when last the parkade was inspected for structural fitness in case I invoke horror pictures of its catastrophic collapse.

The behaviour of some marshals at the parkade is a mirror of a bigger problem at Town House — litter, potholes, street lights, vendors, illegal structures, pirate taxis, stinking drinking water, sewage, overgrown trees, tall grass, appointment of a town clerk, refuse collection, parking, public transport . . . the list is endless.

Gerald Dehwe is the pseudonymn of a Harare resident.

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