adminTemba Dube Senior Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council has embarked on a door-to-door awareness campaign to encourage residents to use water sparingly as the possibility of reverting to four days a week without water looms.Council had reduced water shedding from three days a week for all suburbs to two but following a sharp increase in daily water consumption, councillors authorised the city’s director of engineering services Engineer Simela Dube, to automatically go back to the previous schedule of three or four days a week if residents failed to heed calls to reduce consumption.
The total daily average pumped from the city’s supply dams is about 112 000 cubic metres so residents are not supposed to consume more than that in a day.
However, according to council statistics, residents are consuming as much as 134 000 cubic metres of water daily. In an interview yesterday, the local authority’s senior public relations officer, Mrs Nesisa Mpofu, said council had embarked on a door-to-door campaign targeting at least 100 000 residents.
She said the campaign was being carried out under the Bulawayo Emergency Water Augmentation Programme (BEWAP) and involved 97 community workers.
“So far we have reached 70 486 residents. The campaign has been carried out in areas that include Magwegwe North and West, Old Pumula, Pumula South, Robert Sinyoka, St Peter’s, Njube, Lobengula, Nkulumane and Mahatshula. Besides education about water conservation, the teams are also educating residents about basic hygiene issues to avoid outbreak of diseases,” said Mrs Mpofu.
The local authority is working with Dabane Trust, MEDAIR and World Vision Zimbabwe to implement the programme. Contacted for comment yesterday, Bulawayo’s Mayor Councillor Martin Moyo said the water situation in the city was dire.
“We continue to get disturbing reports about excessive consumption by residents. I was with Eng Dube yesterday and he told me that consumption has been as high as 134 mega litres (134 000 cubic metres) per day, on some days,” said Clr Moyo.
He said exceeding 112 000 cubic metres per day caused drastic drop of water levels in the city’s reservoirs.
“The reservoirs are supposed to be maintained at certain levels. Allowing water levels to drop below the required levels reduces water pressure and causes areas on high land to go without supplies,” said Clr Moyo.
He said if the situation persisted, depending on the extent of overuse, council may go back to the four days a week shedding schedule.
“We appeal to residents to conserve water. Every drop counts. Although theoretically we have enough water in the dams to last more than a year, the pipes that bring the water from the dams to the reservoirs are too small to cope with the demand. Continually going above the limit may result in the city running dry,” said Clr Moyo.
Bulawayo, a perennial water shortage area, has been put under permanent water rationing with houses in the eastern suburbs not being allowed to use more than 350 litres per day, those in the western suburbs are allowed to use 300 litres while cottages should not exceed 200 litres everyday.
In 2010, council announced that people caught using domestic water for construction would be fined $1 000 up from $30 and those who use water for brick moulding would also pay $1 000.
In 2011, fines for people caught using hosepipes shot up to $1 500 from $200 as the city battled to conserve dwindling supplies.
Londile Moyo
Bongani Ndlovu