Geo Pomona, the company controversially chosen by the government to manage Harare’s waste services, plans to expand across all provinces, despite lacking agreements with other local authorities.
The company is set to receive hundreds of refuse and street cleaning trucks from Belarus within months, through a government-backed arrangement.
Speaking in Belarus after his company signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Belarus government, Geo Pomona executive chairman and CEO Dilesh Nguwaya, said:
Geo Pomona has gone a step up because we want to replicate what we are doing in Harare to all the other nine provinces where we are going to deal with all the refuse waste collection.
We’re going to collect the whole area, and we are going to manage all the waste remaining in the country.
Nguwaya said that under the arrangement facilitated by the Zimbabwe government, Geo Pomona had “secured trucks, equipment, and water treatment plants,” though financial details remain undisclosed.
He added that the company’s nationwide expansion is backed by “cabinet authority” granted in 2022, implying contracts will be awarded without a public tender process.
Geo Pomona was controversially appointed by the local government ministry in 2022 to manage Harare’s Pomona dump site and convert waste to energy.
The company immediately started billing the city $40 per tonne for waste, and when Harare struggled to pay, the government assumed responsibility for the payments, offsetting them against devolution funds.
The 30-year deal requires Harare to deliver a minimum of 550 tonnes of waste per day in the first year, amounting to US$8.03 million for Geo Pomona. By 2027, this will increase to 1,000 tonnes per day, equating to US$14.6 million annually until 2052.
Nguwaya, a close associate of President Mnangagwa’s son Sean, was previously charged with corruption over COVID-19 procurement contracts through his company Drax International, but was acquitted in court.
More: ZimLive
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