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HARARE – The City of Harare requires at least $600 million to rehabilitate its aged water reticulation infrastructure to improve supplies in the city, a senior official said on Monday.
Town Clerk, Hosiah Chisango said after a tour of one of the city’s sewer treatment plants that the local authority already had a rehabilitation master-plan in place.
“We do have a master plan for those water issues which starts from rehabilitating the current facilities like what we are trying to do at Morton Jeffrey to make sure that it operates at full capacity and then go to the reticulation system to make sure that there is replacement and upgrading of the piping system,” he said.
“So those plans we do have them. The latest costing that we have I think we are looking at over $600 million for reticulation, for rehabilitating the existing infrastructure.”
Chisango said the city council had in the meantime made use of African Development Bank funding to upgrade sections of the water supply system.
“We have just done some 50 kilometres with assistance from the African Development Bank so those are some of the small works that we are doing while we wait for the huge investments to kick in,” he said.
The water and sewer systems for Harare need an overhaul and have been blamed for cholera outbreaks which often occur in the city due to unreliable supplies and burst pipes.
Some parts of Harare have gone for years without receiving piped water from council.
Overhauling the water and sewer system involves rehabilitating existing infrastructure and constructing new dams, sewer plants, treatment works, storage and distribution facilities. – New Ziana
Online Reporter