adminhave to buy water from the scores of new businesses that truck water around the city.
The city council is now worried about the quality of that water. If they could supply enough, even only every other day or twice a week, they would not have to worry. Municipal water is a lot cheaper than trucked water. Most of the larger city centre companies, who can usually get council water for at least a few hours a day, have tanks but use the cheaper council water.
This option is not available for most businesses and residents in eastern and northern Harare. So businesses and residents have to rely on boreholes and wells, not always possible in those hilly areas, or buy water. The health problems of the city would be horrendous if those water truckers were not in business.
Of course most buyers want to know where their water is coming from.
Invariably they are told that it comes from boreholes, which most people rightly regard as a reasonably safe source.
Those who can afford this trucked water, and at US$10 a cubic metre it is not cheap, can also afford to buy drinking water and do so.
They are not stupid. This is why there is no health problem so far.
That said, people have seen some trucks loading water from the Mukuvisi River; where Chiremba Road crosses that river is a popular collection point.
This could be acceptable, so long as the water is for a building site and everyone working there is warned that it is not to be drunk. But we agree that it is worrying.
The city council is now formulating a registration and test procedure. So long as this is done properly we cannot see any reason for objections, but it must be done properly.
The objective must be to provide buyers with information so that they know where their water comes from and what it contains. The simplest group to register would be the legitimate businesses using boreholes and taking care to avoid contamination during loading, delivery and unloading.
The water from the borehole should be analysed and someone competent should examine the loading and delivery procedures to ensure that cleanliness rules are followed. But so long as the business was operating properly there should be no reason to test every delivery; perhaps just the odd random sample taken every now and again would be enough.
In other words the same sort of procedures that are enforced for restaurants would be adequate.
Municipal inspectors do not test every meal, but every now and again they turn up unannounced and have a good look around and take samples. This works and it would work for legitimate water vendors at the same low costs.
Trucked water need not be pushed even higher in price.
The council should publish a list of registered and tested suppliers, just as the Government published a list of suppliers of bottled water that met standards, and a copy of the analysis of what comes out of the borehole should be given to every customer.
The council should stress to buyers that the water should be treated as any water that comes from a well or borehole, that is boiled or treated before being drunk.
In this registration process there might be room for cheaper river water for construction sites only. But the council would need to be satisfied that it was not being diverted.
Perhaps it might even have to be dyed; potassium permanganate would give it a good colour as well as killing many germs.
The problem would be fly-by-night conmen but legitimising respectable businesses using river water would allow the limited group of inspectors to concentrate on the cowboys.
But in the end it must be up to consumers. If the council can list companies who pass basic health tests and warn residents what sort of water each delivers, it will have done a major service without disrupting a vital business.
And it can always push these companies out of business simply by delivering water itself, through its pipes, to every home every day.
It must be careful, until then, not to create the health disaster it is trying to avoid by disrupting legitimate businesses, although improving information for consumers and weeding out conmen would be a good idea.
Online Reporter