adminmany reasons for the shortages, each making the crisis worse.
There have been delivery delays for critical chemicals, particularly aluminium sulphate. The MDC-T run council has a poor record of collecting debts, and so is always far shorter of cash than it should be, but we presume that water treatment chemicals are a priority. The present shortage appears to be a failure of the supplier to deliver what was ordered.
Aluminium sulphate is not a complex, or even rare, chemical. For decades the council used ground up ore from a quarry on the Mozambican border.
So water, which was already short, is even scarcer. We fail to see why the council has so many problems. It may well wish to spread orders, but minimum standards are required from suppliers and if they cannot be met, then those suppliers must be struck from the list. Risking a major epidemic so as to give as many businesses as possible a chance is dangerous.
A long-running problem has been the crumbling equipment and the corroded pipes. Morton Jaffray was built and equipped in stages. The last addition was as long ago as 1992, which doubled the capacity of the waterworks.
At that stage the bits and pieces of the first 40 years of expansion were supposed to be renovated, made like new, but this was postponed. So we have 60-year-old and 50-year-old machinery processing water.
The pipelines are in a very serious state. In recent weeks, the council has replaced some pipes in the city centre laid around 30 years ago. And they were in very bad shape.
There are a lot of pipes that are significantly older, so we tend to believe reports that at least half of the water now being pumped is lost through leaks. We also suspect that the figure may be inflated somewhat, to cover other inefficiencies in the council, but concur it is bad.
Some progress will be made soon as 150km of pipes will be relaid, including, we presume, most major pipelines, using a US$144 million Chinese loan. But that cannot be done instantly, so we will suffer for many months yet.
Other processing equipment will finally be replaced or added to existing facilities.
The council is now at long last re-organising its water administration, dividing the city in zones with an engineer in charge, and we presume responsible, for water supplies and pipes in each area. We hope this is more than papering over the surface and that these zone managers will have real powers to do something.
Local knowledge and control can at least stop the nonsense we see now where a hole is dug to repair something and left open for weeks before workmen return to do whatever they were supposed to do. Major leaks can at least be seen by local staff, and something done promptly.
The council also needs to ration water and to be a lot fairer in how it supplies and cuts. Zesa, under prodding from its regulator, shows that bad times can be equitably shared and Bulawayo now has a highly functional schedule of cuts and supply that ensures everyone has water at least every other day. Bulawayo has been forced, thanks to almost dry small dams, to do this for years.
Bulawayo has never had a cholera epidemic, unlike Harare, which even in bad weeks, like this week, pumps more per person than Bulawayo can.
Too many councillors and senior city officials possibly rely on private supplies. Well, they should also see how the rest of us are forced to live.
They can do a lot better, even in bad times.
Online Reporter