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He said the agreement would be in place until council completed the erection of a dedicated power line to the Cowdray Park booster, which the Minister of Water Resources Management and Development, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, said would be finished in about four months.
“Zesa has written to council, agreeing to exclude Cowdray Park from load shedding. This is the culmination of hard work by council, the Ministry of Water and the four clusters from the water crisis committee namely resources mobilisation, monitoring and compliance, advocacy and information dissemination and public education, that are made up of volunteers from the city,” said Eng Mthunzi.
He said the power utility asked council for a schedule of the hours during which pumping took place to ensure that there would be no power cuts during the time.
“We have sat down and the schedule we will be sending to Zesa indicates that we pump water between 6am and 12 noon, then 5pm to 12 midnight everyday. According to the agreement, there should be no load shedding at Cowdray Park during those times,” he said.
The Gwayi Catchment manager for Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa), Mr Fortune Musona, yesterday confirmed that the work to rehabilitate the boreholes had not started.
“At the moment, I cannot give details because I am in Harare. However, we will be starting soon,” said Mr Musona.
Last week, Minister Nkomo said he had secured bout $1,4 million to rehabilitate the 26 boreholes at Nyamandlovu Aquifer.
He said the funds also included rehabilitation of 65 borehole pumps in the city.
Minister Nkomo said the Australian and German governments had committed to fund the aquifer project, while the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) had undertaken to fix the pumps.
“The total cost for rehabilitating 26 boreholes is estimated at $991 750. The dedicated power supply for the two booster stations; Rochester and Cowdray Park, in order to avoid load shedding, would cost $277 300,” he said.
Bulawayo started a water shedding schedule of 72 hours per week for all suburbs.
On Monday, Eng Mthunzi said the duration of shedding might increase to 96 hours every week if residents continued exceeding rationing limits.
Two dams have been decommissioned to date — Umzingwane and Upper Ncema. The two dams have a total capacity of 62 901 200 cubic metres when full.
This leaves the city with three supply dams, Inyankuni, Lower Ncema and Insiza with the bulk of the water coming from Insiza.
The local authority anticipates that Inyankuni and Upper Ncema might be decommissioned by December.
Online Reporter