Mutare City Council has closed part of its offices after a number of workers tested positive for COVID-19, 263Chat can exclusively report.
City management was at the time of publishing locked up in an emergency meeting to assess options in light of the obtaining situation.
Council has in the interim closed off part of its offices and sent workers home after a collective labour appeal was accepted by the management.
Key offices like the cashier, Municipal police and the Town Clerk’s department were the ones left operational.
“The situation is tense, people are panicking over the testing of over 50 percent of staff at Civic Centre, we are afraid to work because of the positive results that have come.
“Management had to close off offices and send some workers back home, only the cashiers are left even some ratepayers were turned away,” said one council worker on condition of anonymity.
Acting Town Clerk, Dr Anthony Mutara, confirmed the development but was coy on confirming the actual number of persons who tested positive.
He said the council will maintain its business operations online with a reduced workforce at the Civic Centre while other departments will be closed off for routine tests on its workforce to ascertain their status.
“In the meantime, we are disinfecting the whole of the council, and continuing with our routine tests and identify those that are positive who may be asymptomatic,” said Mutara.
Previously, council offices had to be fumigated after the former Town Clerk, the late Joshua Maligwa succumbed to the virus in January 2020.
Mutare Provincial Hospital and the Mutare Infectious Disease Hospital is currently in derelict condition and in need of major refurbishments to ensure their preparedness to handles COVID-19 cases.
City of Mutare officials recently revealed that the Mutare Infectious Disease Hospital set aside by the council as a quarantine centre, requires around US$400 thousand for renovations.
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) spokesperson David Panganai says the current incapacitation of health delivery services was an desperate call to government to allocate more budgetary resources to the critical sector.
“In this time of devolution, it is sad that our provincial facilities are ill-equipped and dilapidated so much that they need refurbishments to be able to cater for patients, but the government still wants to centralize services.
“Devolution should be fully implemented so that we do not rely on one health centre as a nation to assist people if there are health problems, resources should be allocated to all the provinces.
“As we speak such critical institutions like Mutare Provincial Hospital are subject to power outages, people are turned away at the outpatients when they run out of diesel in their back up generators.
“Surely how can a provincial referral hospital be subjected to load shedding when it is providing essential services, it just shows that our spending priorities are misplaced under this regime,” said Panganai.
