‘Council not responsible for boreholes repair’

Vusumuzi Dube, Municipal Reporter
BULAWAYO City Council management has rubbished the councillors’ protest against alleged failure by the local authority to repair non-functioning boreholes in the city.

The local authority’s spokesperson, Mrs Nesisa Mpofu has instead said the responsibility to repair and maintain the boreholes was not theirs but was the mandate of community groups selected to man the boreholes with council only providing spares and training on how to maintain them.

Mrs Mpofu said council’s core business was to provide piped water.

Councillors in the Future Water Supplies and Action committee last week vowed not to sit as a committee until council officials repair boreholes in the city following reports made by the councillors over six months ago.

The councillors said the Town Clerk, Mr Christopher Dube and his directors were sabotaging development in the city by failing to implement council resolutions.

Responding to the allegations, Mrs Mpofu said in a Press release that there was a council resolution to the effect that boreholes were to be maintained and repaired by Water Point and Borehole Ward Committees.

“In the past, the city of Bulawayo has discussed community based management of boreholes and at its meeting of 5 April 2006 resolved that each borehole will have a committee.

“The resolution states that the water point committee’s responsibilities are to operate the borehole, maintain it as well as provide security.

“The council team’s responsibilities are to provide major maintenance of the boreholes and continuous training of the maintenance personnel,” said Mrs Mpofu.

She said as a local authority they would then provide tools to be used by these committees in repairing and maintaining the boreholes.

“In November 2016, Council further resolved that tools were to be bought to capacitate community groups to repair their own boreholes since the core business of Council is to provide piped water.

“The tools would be kept at Council Housing offices and would be used with supervision from council employees and the community groups would be trained by council employees to repair the boreholes during a transitional period when council would carry out repairs,” she said.

Mrs Mpofu said at times council workers assisted the community groups in the repair of the boreholes and has since contracted a company to do the work.

She said the company was tasked with clearing the backlog of boreholes which are not functioning.

“At the end of 2017, council outsourced the repair of boreholes on an ad-hoc basis. Council provides spares and the contracted company provides the labour and expertise. The second phase of repairs commences today (yesterday) in which 26 boreholes will be repaired.

The city has a total of 338 boreholes and 43 of them are not working. According to the latest council report, councillors revealed that they had continuously complained over malfunctioning boreholes in their wards but nothing was being done to repair them hence the decision to engage in the “job action” to force council management to fix the boreholes.

When this resolution was tabled before a full council meeting last Wednesday fellow councillors supported the motion and threatened to also join the strike.

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