Chronicle Editor
Patrick Chitumba, Midlands Bureau Chief
GWERU Mayor Councillor Josiah Makombe has called on residents to brace for water shortages after the local authority introduced water shedding in the city.
In an interview yesterday, Cllr Makombe said the drastic measure had been taken because council was failing to constantly supply potable water to its rate payers because of obsolete infrastructure.
A number of Gweru suburbs have been without water since last week, as the council is experiencing pumping challenges at Gwenhoro treatment plant due to dilapidated infrastructure.
Gwenhoro Dam and the treatment plant are 46km away from Gweru.
“Yes it true that we have introduced water shedding in Gweru. Our pumping capacity is not enough for our town hence the need to share the water that we are pumping at the moment until we fix our ageing infrastructure. There is a schedule to that effect on the days and time the different areas that is villages and suburbs will be affected by load shedding and residents can get it from council offices,” he said.
Cllr Makombe said the local authority was pumping between 43-45 mega-litres of water per day which he said was no longer enough for the city’s growing population of close to 200 000 residents.
“We are busy mobilising foreign currency to buy extra pumps for our Gwenhoro pumping station and also work on the ageing pipe network which needs replacement. We will update our stakeholders once we get partners or investors,” he said.
Government allocated about $5 million to the local authority to improve its water pumping capacity.
Town clerk Ms Elizabeth Gwatipedza said the pumps at Gwenhoro Dam were installed in 1957 and therefore the need to change them as they could stop working any time.
“The pumps we are using at Gwenhoro water pump station were installed in 1957 and are therefore very old and need to be changed. So with the allocation ($5 million) from the Government we are going to purchase new pumps. However the pumps we want cost over $1 million meaning we won’t be able to purchase many pumps as we would have wanted,” she said.
Last year, councillors and management failed to agree on a proposal to introduce a water levy to address some of the challenges faced by the city.
The councillors said ratepayers could not afford to pay the levy since they were already failing to settle bills owing to economic hardships with the management arguing that such a levy had helped resolve some of the water challenges faced by other local authorities.
A service level benchmarking peer review report carried out in June last year revealed that council was losing at least 57 percent of its treated water through burst pipes and leakages.
Online Reporter