Harare ratepayers will be forced to pay almost US$3 million per month for refuse collection and street cleaning through a murky deal between the government, the capital’s municipality and Geo Pomona Waste Management.
The secret tripartite contract that took effect on November 25, 2024 will last for at least five years, meaning that Geo Pomona, a company that enjoys strong links to the ruling elite, will pocket a staggering minimum of US$162 million over the agreed period, at a mandatory US$2,7 million per month.
Zimbabwe’s capital has been struggling with waste management for several years and central government appears to have taken advantage of the situation to impose Geo Pomona Waste Management, a company linked to an East European businessman saddled with corruption scandals.
Geo Pomona’s executive chairman and chief executive, Dilesh Nguwaya, is close to President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s family and is a frequent guest at state functions.
An investigation by Truth Diggers, with support from Information for Development Trust (IDT), a non-profit media organisation promoting investigative journalism in Zimbabwe and the Sadc region, uncovered the contract between council, Local Government ministry and Geo Pomona that critics say could be used to milk the struggling local authority’s coffers dry while doing little to alleviate Harare’s deepening waste collection crisis.
Clause 22 of the contract says Geo Pomona is supposed to bill the government as the contracting partner, giving the impression that it is the Local Government ministry that has the responsibility to finance the refuse collection and street cleaning project.
However, the fine print reveals that the burden to pay Geo Pomona rests with the City of Harare (CoH) and, ultimately, ratepayers.
Under Clause 23 of the contract, the municipality is forced to open its revenue account for scrutiny by the government for purposes of billing and CoH is supposed to collect money from ratepayers for the work that Geo Pomona would have done.
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“The client (CoH) shall continue to charge, bill and collect fees for services being provided by the contractor (Geo Pomona),” reads the leaked contract that the government and the other parties have kept under wraps.
“The client shall remit to the contracting party (government), all revenue collected from users for services being provided by the contractor in terms of this contract.
“At all times during the duration of this contract, (the) contracting party shall be allowed access to the client’s revenue account to determine the performance/execution of work and settlements of payments due to the contractor.”
In effect, it is the ratepayers who will foot the waste collection and street cleaning bill.
Geo Pomona, fronted by Nguwaya, was initially imposed on Harare City Council in 2022 by the Local Government and Public Works ministry to manage the Pomona dump site on a build operate and transfer arrangement.
Its parent company Geogenix BV, which is registered in the Netherlands, is linked to Albanian businessman Mirel Mertiri, who has faced a string of corruption charges in his own country linked to the setting up of incinerators.
Nguwaya, who was acquitted by the courts after he was charged over US$60 million Covid-19 procurement contracts with his other company Drax International in 2020, is Geo Pomona’s local point person.
The initial deal in 2022 stipulated that CoH would give up its main dumpsite to Geo Pomona on a free lease for 30 years and, at the end of the arrangement, the waste management company would hand it back to the local authority.
Geo Pomona and its parent company, Geogenix BV, were expected to rack in a whopping US$320 million from the deal where council was going to be billed US$40 per tonne for waste delivered to its own dumpsite.
After the local authority insisted that it could not afford the costs, the government said it would assume responsibility for the payments directly, which would be offset through the city council’s allocation of devolution funds.
Council, which was expected to be delivering 1000 tonnes per day of waste to Pomona and pay a minimum of US$14.6 million annually starting in 2027, struggled to deliver on its end of the bargain as it struggled to moblise refuse trucks, paving the way for the new controversial arrangement.
Mafume’s dark shadow
According to the new 31 page agreement, which was signed by Harare mayor, Jacob Mafume, Nguwaya and Nathan Nkomo, who represented the Local Government minister Daniel Garwe, Geo Pomana was given the nod to take control of street sweeping, refuse collection and dumping of the waste.
Ironically, as the preamble of the contract indicates, it was CoH that initiated the deal after it sought that Geo Pomona takes over the “responsibility to ensure efficient and sustainable waste collection and removal and street cleaning services without delay.”
The request led to government deliberations, resulting in a cabinet resolution on June 25, 2024 that approved the transfer of refuse collection duties from CoH to Geo Pomona.
Led by Mafume, who is accused by other councilors of benefiting from a US$200 000 monthly stipend for giving his blessings to the deal, CoH on October 2, 2024 convened a full council meeting that ratified the deal.
Mafume, however, refuted the bribe allegation in an interview with Truth Diggers.
He also claimed that the municipality had not paid anything to Geo Pomona, saying it was the responsibility of the government as the contracting party to do so.
“This is a government programme,” he said. “The council has not paid a single cent. It is a tripartite contract between Pomona, the government and the council and the amount is determined by work done, but it has not been paid by the council.
“Council has not paid anything. The Ministry of Local Government is in charge in the same manner the ministry is in charge of the Pomona dumpsite.”
Initially, the mayor vocally opposed the deal but changed his tone after he bounced back into his position following leadership squabbles in his Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC) party in December 2023.
Self-imposed CCC interim secretary general, Sengezo Tshabangu, had wrestled control of the opposition party from its founding leader Nelson Chamisa.
Tshabangu, who is in the same faction as Mafume, has sought to align the opposition party with the ruling Zanu PF.
Councillors from CCC who spoke to Truth Diggrs said they were shocked to see Mafume turning into a proponent of the deal by championing it at the council chambers and appending his signature to the agreement with Geo Pomona.
The company officially started work on February 10, 2025, more than two months later than was anticipated in the contract, amid evidence from the Geo Pomona website and its social media platforms that it was ill-prepared for the job.
Around the time the company announced that it had started fulfilling its obligations under the contract, Geo Pomona told the media that it was still finalising the logistics for waste collection around Harare.
That the contract was not put to tender aside, Geo Pomona’s own admission of lacking the requisite logistics up to now shows that the deal was awarded to an ill-prepared contractor.
Some of the logistics included defining operational zones, identifying transfer points and securing space for its fleet, a revelation that exposed that when the contract was signed there was no proof that Geo Pomona had the capacity to do the work.
Six months after the contract was supposed to come into effect, there is still no specific timeline for the acquisition and deployment of logistics, including the refuse collection fleet.
On its website, the company only states that “our trucks will be delivered soon.”
It also claims that it had collected over 80 000 tonnes of waste from illegal dumpsites in Mbare, Kuwadzana, Warren Park and Highfield, among other areas.
However, investigations around Harare’s most populated suburbs showed that the zones were still battling with uncollected waste at numerous sites.
Geo Pomona optics
Reuben Akili, the Combined Harare Residents Association spokesperson, told Truth Diggers that Geo Pomona only actively collected waste in most areas for a month in February, which he described as a stunt to legitimise the deal.
“There was a stunt that happened for a month in February where waste was collected and dumpsites were cleared, but there was no consistent refuse collection,” Akili said.
“So, to us, it was a stunt. Nothing has changed when it comes to the waste collection situation in Harare. The situation has actually worsened.
“In fact, we did not expect anything to change because the whole thing was clear to residents from the word go that it was not sustainable.”
He added that some companies and residents were resorting to using illegal dumpsites because waste was still going for weeks without being collected.
The schedule of works in the deal states that Geo Pomona would be responsible for the clearing of illegal dumpsites and door to door refuse collection but, as open sources have revealed, it is still insisting that CoH, despite its incapacitation, will do that for an unspecified period.
This implies that it is already in breach of the November contract, and raises fears ratepayers are likely to pay for services that were not rendered.
Precious Shumba, the Harare Residents Trust (HRT) director, said the deal presented corruption red flags and abuse of ratepayers’ money.
“The Harare Residents Trust rejects, and is firmly opposed to the implementation of, the deal by the City of Harare in partnership with the government and Geo Pomona Waste Management,” Shumba told Truth Diggers.
“Corruption is driving this deal. The key people involved in the deal make one realise that this is a cartel bent on siphoning public funds to a company backed by the powerful ruling elites and their proxies.”
Shumba said it was on record that Harare City Council officially cancelled the deal after resolving that it did not serve the interests of rate payers.
Previous deal
A full council meeting chaired by Mafume in August 2022 resolved to cancel the deal with Georgenix BV after then Local Government minister July Moyo had ordered the local authority to pay US$1.5 million for waste delivered at the Pomona dumpsite in two months.
Georgenix then reincarnated as Geo Pomona Waste Management Company, leading to last year’s controversial deal pushed by Garwe.
“The most frustrating part of this deal is that the mayor was united with City of Harare councillors in vehemently opposing this deal, but now the mayor has become closer to the government against the standing resolution on this deal,” Shumba said.
“With that realisation, we suspect that some officials within the City of Harare cartel handling the Pomona dumpsite deal made underhand arrangements with officials in the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works to cripple the operations of the City of Harare for their personal benefits,” he added.
Geo Pomona and the government repeatedly ignored media queries on the deal.
A joint implementing committee was set up comprising of officials from the Local Government ministry, council and Geo Pomona to oversee the rolling out of the new services, but efforts to ascertain whether it has started doing its work were fruitless as its members were not forthcoming with information.
Nguwaya, who last month travelled to Belarus with Mnangagwa, recently revealed that Geo Pomona would soon be expanding its services to all the country’s provinces, replicating the Harare model, despite documented failure in the capital.
Geo Pomona will receive hundreds of refuse and street cleaning trucks from the East European country in the coming months under another controversial arrangement underwritten by the Zimbabwe government and signed by Nguwaya during Mnangagwa’s state visit to Belarus.
*Truth Diggers is the investigative journalism arm of Alpha Media Holdings, publishers of The Standard, NewsDay, Zimbabwe Independent, Southern Eye and Southern Eye on Sunday as well as proprietors of HStv
