By A Correspondent- Gweru City Council is failing to cope with the demand for graves as Covid 19 takes toll on the country’s third largest city after Harare and Bulawayo.

The Mayor Josiah Makombe expressed the grim picture during his state of the city address delivered to the media. He said the situation is worsened by the fact that the council uses manual means to dig graves. As a result, the ground is sometimes hard or rocky.

He said that the City Council is now planning to buy automated equipment to use in the digging of graves.

He told The Mirror that in June alone 50 bodies were buried in the City’s three cemeteries. This is three times the increase compared to the same period in 2020.

“Covid-19 has raised the demand for graves. We have three cemeteries and our main challenge is that grave digging is done manually and the ground is sometimes hard rocky.

We are still in the process of trying to automate grave digging if funds permit,” said Makombe in a statemen.

Gweru is Covid-19 hot stop with all it’s tertiary institutions having to close down after a number of students tested positive.

— Mirror