City should do more to tackle cholera threat

Tanaka Mahanya

HARARE Residents Trust director, Precious Shumba, says the City Council should invest in upgrading the working spaces of vendors as a way of dealing with cholera.

Concerns have been raised over flowing sewage and lack of adequate toilets, especially at Mbare Musika.

At the Mbare vegetable market, toilets are usually blocked and flowing sewage is the order of the day.

Shumba said the situation was pathetic.

“Council charges those farmers huge amounts of money to operate, but they are not investing in upgrading the working spaces of vendors. They have not addressed this issue in an area that is usually congested on a daily basis.

“The City is not prepared and the residents are at high risk. We are not in a position to say we are addressing the cholera threat.”

He said Harare has failed to address the challenges which led to the cholera outbreak in 2008 due to corruption at Council.

“The main issue is to address the replacement of water pipes and leakages.

“There was massive corruption in Budiriro by Harare Water.

“Some of the people who got the contracts to lay water pipes are engineers at the City of Harare.

“Their companies got the contracts and they used the wrong sizes of pipes for the sewer, that is why Budiriro is always affected by cholera.

“Whenever we have a challenge, Budiriro will not escape, until they address the problem.”

Budiriro recorded the first cholera case in Harare on April 22.

“The City supplies water to Chitungwiza, Norton, Epworth and Harare residents.

“From the last interface we had with Harare in 2022, they told us that they have around 330 000 people connected to the water and sewer system.

“It means that at any given time, when they pump water, it must reach around that number, but Harare has a population of around 2.5 million people.

“They say they are pumping around 395 mega litres but this water is not reaching the intended households.

“In fact, they said that 60 percent of the treated water is lost through the distribution networks and illegal connections.”

Shumba said these illegal connections are usually facilitated by employees of the Harare Water department.

“Sadly, they have not been held accountable, but this 60 percent has been on the Council records for five years.

“Unfortunately, there is no plan to address it.”