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He said council would have to decide how it was going to use the $500 000 to ease water problems in the city.
“I am happy to say, although I am yet to inform council, that I talked to Finance Minster Tendai Biti on Tuesday and he has availed $500 000 for the city to use on water problems,” said Minister Sipepa Nkomo.
He said technicians had tried to put the Mtshabezi pipeline on a trial run this week, but a generator problem had forced them to postpone the exercise.
“We are yet to connect electricity, so we are using generators. We managed to connect the two generators but every time we tried to start the pumps, one of them would switch off,” said Minister Nkomo.
“We have since brought in an expert from South Africa to work on the synchronisation of the system.”
Minister Nkomo declined to give a date for the commissioning of the pipeline, saying if technicians failed to meet the date, the media would take him to task.
“I cannot give a date because my friends from the media will jump on me if we fail to complete the work by that date. I can, however, say the pipeline has been completed. The connections to the reservoirs have been done and the generators are in place,” he said.
The Mtshabezi pipeline is expected to provide an extra 17 000 cubic metres of water daily, to Bulawayo, thereby reducing the duration of shedding by 24 hours.
The Minister said the city needs about 129 000 cubic metres of water every day, but was only producing about 95 000 cubic metres.
He said funding had been availed to rehabilitate boreholes at Nyamandlovu aquifer.
“At the moment we are extracting between 4 000 and 5 000 cubic metres daily. This can be increased to about 30 000 cubic metres after the rehabilitation exercise,” he said.
On Wednesday, Minister Biti said the additional water from the aquifer was likely to reduce water-shedding by a further 48 hours.
The city recently adopted a weekly 96- hour water-shedding period for all suburbs, following the decommissioning of two of its five supply dams, Umzingwane and Lower Ncema.
Upper Ncema and Inyankuni are likely to be decommissioned before the end of the year, leaving the city relying on Insiza Dam.
Minister Sipepa said the National Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project (NMZWP), viewed as the permanent solution to Bulawayo’s water problems, would be completed in three years, from the date contractors start working on it.
He said a Chinese bank had availed about $854 million of the required $1,2 billion, with the remainder to be issued after Government completed some groundwork procedures.
The deputy Mayor Councillor Amen Mpofu, Mr Donald Khumalo, a member of the NMZWP board, representatives from the Bulawayo United Residents’ Association (Bura) and Bulawayo residents were among the stakeholders that were at the meeting.
Online Reporter