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THE keen interest of the Government to solve the Bulawayo water crisis is testimony that President Mnangagwa does not want to leave anyone and any place behind in terms of development.
Bulawayo has been facing a perennial water shortage with power cuts being executed every year to manage the precious liquid. While the National Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project is the ultimate answer to the water crisis, the Government has in recent years intervened to drill boreholes at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer and also fund other activities to repair the aging infrastructure. This was despite the fact that water provision is the responsibility of the local authority, in this case, the Bulawayo City Council.
The council has in recent weeks blamed the water crisis on power cuts, which they said attributed to less water being pumped from the water stations. In response, the Government moved in and indicated that the city’s pumping stations will soon be exempted from electricity load shedding.
BCC claimed it was only receiving eight to 10 hours of power supply a day, resulting in a drop from the early March 2023 system input volume. Last Saturday, the Local Government Ministry met council officials and officials from the Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company (ZETDC) to get an appreciation of the prevailing situation.
It was in that meeting that ZETDC undertook to ensure that the city’s pumping and treatment works are exempted from load shedding, while the city will also not endure any load shedding during the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair period. ZITF is set to be held from 25 to 29 April.
In an interview after the meeting, which also included a tour of Criterion Treatment Works, the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Mr Zvinechimwe Churu said as a short-term measure, it was now for the local authority to apply for the virement of their devolution funds, so as to get US$900 000 for water pumping and treatment works.
“The meeting was mainly meant for us to have an appreciation of the water supply situation currently obtaining in the city. This follows a number of media reports which indicated that there were challenges being faced by the city and we wanted to find out by ourselves what is really obtaining. In the short term, from the meeting that we had, there is an indication that we require an amount of about US$900 000. We believe that if the council makes a request for funding through their allocation of devolution funds, the Ministry of Local Government will support them very much because this has the potential of unlocking a significant increase in megalitres of water,” said Mr Churu.
ZETDC acting western region general manager Engineer Lloyd Jaji, confirmed that the power utility will work on exempting the city’s pumping and treatment works from load shedding.
There is no doubt that without the input from Central Government, Bulawayo residents will be feeling the pinch much more. The water crisis came when residents were already being short-changed by the local authority which has failed to collect garbage consistently in residential areas.
Uncollected garbage and lack of water are surely a recipe for a health disaster.
Online Reporter