Harare sends out water SOS

Priscilla Kamurira and Belinda Mutayiwa

The Government has ordered Harare City Council to liaise with the Procurement Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) to import its chemicals direct from manufacturers.

In the meantime, the council has sent out an SOS appeal to address the current water crisis.

Addressing a Press conference Tuesday, the Acting Minister of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Honourable Ziyambi Ziyambi said the problem that caused the shutdown of the Morton Jaffrary water works is that Harare City Council has no revenue to purchase water chemicals.

“At least US$20 million is needed for water treatment for the next two months,” he said.

In a bid to improve water and waste water systems, the Government recently released $37,4 million to assist the council.

“The Government has placed stringent conditions to the funds to ensure they do not get diverted and a committee of Government officials has been set up to monitor the implementation of the project,” he said.

Honourable Ziyambi said for the past five months Harare City Council has had no billing system and residents have not been paying their bills leading them to owe one billion dollars to council.

“The people of Harare owe their council almost one billion dollars in unpaid bills and at this time I am calling on every citizen of this city to rush and pay something to the council to get their own local authority back on the rails,” he said.

Meanwhile, council spokesperson Michael Chideme said they have appealed to Government to declare the water situation a State of Emergency.

“We are asking for a bailout, we are asking for the water situation to be declared an emergency or a disaster so that resources can be pooled together to address the issue. Some of the solutions . . . will include the construction of new water sources like Kunzvi, Musami, Mazoe and Muda dams,” said Chideme.

Chideme said that Morton Jaffray water treatment plant remains shutdown because council does not have the critical chemicals for water treatment as well as foreign currency to purchase the chemicals.

“The acting Town Clerk is running around to make sure that we resume production at Morton Jaffray. The forex is not readily available, but our major problem as the City of Harare is not to do with forex, but has to do with the interbank exchange rate because the amounts we pay for chemicals and what we charge our customers . . . we are not charging them using the interbank rate,” said Chideme.

“We are calling on Government to make the surrounding towns have their own water supplies so as to reduce the burden on Harare City Council.”

Council announced that unless there is intervention at the Morton Jaffray water treatment plant as well as due to the low water levels at Lake Chivero, the water crisis is likely to worsen in the Sunshine City.