Mereki Closure: Is It Just An Easy Target?

So Mereki is closed in indefinitely now. The city of Harare says that it cannot guarantee the safety of people who frequent the place as it fights the typhoid epidemic which has already infected over 1,000 people.

There is a raging debate going on though about first of all, whether the city could have done something long time ago and ever allowed the situation get to this. I mean, after all, the place didn’t just get nasty over night. There is also the human issue where hundreds are left without a livelihood.

When you add the fact that places like Pahuku are still open it makes you wonder whether Mereki was an easy target. The fact that it was in a high density area where there is a little care for a clean up campaign – those campaigns always go to CBD, Borrowdale or Avondale – also makes you wonder if one rule applies to some and not to others.

We also wonder if the same rule applies to Meikles where I have seen cockroaches or some supermarkets – Prycmart on Samora Machel Avenue or Athienitis Spar at Fife Avenue shops – where flies can be seen fanning about in their confectioneries section.

We understand the bigger issue is to deal with the crisis at hand. If people are allowed to keep going there and they get it, then they risk infecting the people they come into contact with down the line. But if one buys a pie which has had a fly land on it from some of the shops in the more protected parts of the city and gets infected, is the automatic assumption that they went to Mereki and that is why they got sick?

Just food for thought. Tell us what you think