Chronicle Editor
Uzile Mkwananzi, Sunday News Reporter
PORTABLE water in much of Chivi District in Masvingo province has always been a big challenge but that is likely to be a thing of the past as council has this year set plans in motion to drill 32 boreholes in the district’s 32 wards while repairing 240 boreholes to improve communities’ access to water.
The district is also going to work on rehabilitating 52 boreholes as well as improved water reticulation to 490 residential stands. Confirming the development to Sunday News, the district’s chief executive officer Mr Tariro Matavire said most of their plans for this year were motivated by the input of the community members as they were the ones who highlighted the issues water supply and road maintenance as priority projects.
“This year we have planned and budgeted to do a number of initiatives that will help improve availability of clean water to our communities, these include drilling of 32 boreholes across the district (one in each ward), rehabilitation of 52 boreholes, repairing of 240 boreholes, water reticulation to 490 residential stands and construction of two solar-powered piped water schemes in Wards 22 and 24 of the district. We also are going to do repairs and maintenance work on existing piped water schemes in the district,” said Mr Matavire.
He said all the projects were agreed on with the communities during their extensive consultation meetings.
“Through the meetings that council held with communities, we were informed of matters that were of priority such as water supply and road maintenance. We engaged the communities in the budget formulation process by way of holding consultation meetings in each of the 32 wards in our district and continued engagements shall be through quarterly report back meetings with the communities,” said Mr Matavire.
He said water supply was mainly affected by the persistent droughts that have hit the country over the years where some water sources have become seasonal.
The droughts, according to Mr Matavire, have seen the water table dropping affecting some of the boreholes in terms of their yield while aged infrastructure was also a contributing factor to the water challenge. To help curb these, the CEO said a number of strategies have been put in place while some were already in motion. “We have planned to purchase a borehole rig which will reduce the cost of drilling and also increase our capacity to drill many boreholes in the district. We have future plans of solarising high yield boreholes and establishing piped water schemes in the wards as a way of modernizing water supply infrastructure and ensuring easy access to clean water,” said Mr Matavire.
While improving on water supply, the RDC is also working on road maintenance projects.
“We have plans to surface 3.5 km of roads at Chivi Growth Point and three kilometres at Ngundu Rural Service Centre. We are also going to gravel four kilometres at the two centres as a way of upgrading our network. We are also planning to do maintenance grading of the whole of our network, 545km this year. The project shall be funded through local revenue, road fund and devolution,” said the CEO.
He added that road grading would be spread in the first, second, third and fourth quarter of the year while surfacing of roads at Chivi Growth Point and Ngundu Rural Service Centre will be done in the second quarter.
As the water supply and road construction and maintenance projects gets in motion, Mr Matavire mentioned that there were more projects in the pipeline such as the installation of 21 street lights, completion and equipping of two clinics, construction of three semi-detached staff houses (to accommodate four families) at three schools and also the construction of three classroom blocks at two schools among others.
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