BCC cuts water to entire city

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor 

THE Bulawayo City Council on Thursday (today) shut down water supplies to all residential suburbs in the city following a power outage at its water treatment works on Wednesday.

According to a notice from Bulawayo Town Clerk, Mr Christopher Dube, supplies will only be available in the Central Business District and industrial areas.

“The City of Bulawayo would like to advise members of the public that there will be an emergency shutdown of water supplies to all residential areas in the City except for Industry and the Central Business District on Thursday, 4 November 2021.

“The interruption is due to power outages experienced from yesterday (Wednesday, 3 November 2021) up to today at Ncema Treatment Works and Fernhill Booster Station that resulted in loss of treatment and pumping,” said Mr Dube.

He said the power outage had resulted in low reservoir levels across the city.

Further to that, the Town Clerk revealed that there was loss of pumping due to a power outage at the Rochester Pump Station in Nyamandlovu resulting in lack of pumping from the Aquifer.

“The shutdown will be maintained until restoration of power supply and pumping to enable treatment and to allow for the supply reservoirs to gain to satisfactory levels. The City wishes to further advise that there will be a disruption to the water shedding programme for areas supplied by the Tuli, Rifle Range and Hillside reservoirs.

“The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission Distribution Company is already on the ground investigating the cause of the outage and low voltage and are working towards the restoration of supplies,” he said.