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At least US$100 000 is required for the chemicals daily. In the past council would stock for up to three months. The city requires US$3 million water purification chemicals a month.
Harare residents have not had peace with water supplies, with some suburbs going for over a month without accessing municipal water.
Harare Water director Eng Christopher Zvobgo said water shortages were because the City did not have money to undertake routine maintenance programmes.
“The biggest challenge since November is that customers are not paying. We used to collect up to US$6,7 million a month but that has gone down to below US$3,6 million.
“Because of cash-flow problems we cannot stock chemicals for longer periods.
“Our revenue collection has now slumped to 36 percent,” he said. In the past collections used to be 60 percent of the billed amount, implying the US$6,7 million was a fraction of what it was supposed to collect.
He said the less the city collected reflected negatively on its capacity to provide water.
Out of the 14 pumps at Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Plant only six were working. The same situation applied at Warren Control.
This had resulted in reduced pumping capacity from the usual 620 million litres to around 500 million litres a day.
The deficit is enough to supply 120 000 households.
“We cannot do routine maintenance. We are stuck. It is unfortunate that our people expect efficient service when they are not paying for services provided,” he said.
He said contributing factors to shortages included the closures that were done last month and this month to do repairs on trunk mains from Morton Jaffray.
On what the City intended to do to ensure that residents got uninterrupted water supplies, Eng Zvobgo said US$100 million was required to replace 700km of the water distribution network.
Harare residents were made to believe the City’s water problems were solved when the city announced it had secured a loan of US$144 million from China.
City spokesman Mr Leslie Gwindi said: “The money has not been released yet.”
City officials are supposed to travel to China to conclude supply deals with various companies that deal with water equipment.
On the issue of the 47 pressure reducing valves that have been touted as the solution to pipe bursts, Mr Gwindi said they were still to be bought.
“We have asked for money from Government. Actually the Government owes us.
“We are asking them to pay what they owe us so that we can deliver services to the residents,” he said.
Government owes Harare Water more than US$42 million in unpaid water bills.
Online Reporter