Kwekwe comes out tops in water supply

Patrick Chitumba Midlands Bureau Chief
KWEKWE City Council has the best water quality and sewer reticulation service in the country while Bulawayo has improved over the past year, a senior official has said. The director of local authorities in the Ministry Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Priscilla Mudzinge told The Chronicle that Kwekwe has the most consistent water supply.

“Kwekwe is the best performing local authority in terms of water supply and geographic water coverage, quality of water and most hours in terms of water supply.

“We also have Mutare, Plumtree and Bulawayo is getting there. Gweru offers 20 hours water supply. If we compare from 2010 to date, a lot of local authorities have done well.”

Mudzinge said the country was moving towards the provision of water in local authorities 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “24/7 is an international standard and already we’ve a lot of local authorities who are there and in terms of the quality of effluent discharged, we’ve a number of local authorities who are already there,” she said.

“So it’s a process and we’re getting there and we’re happy as government because the local authorities are working on improving service delivery which is a cluster under the Zim-Asset.”

She said local authorities were meeting in Gokwe to share notes on how to improve service delivery.

“The mandate of local authorities is to give service delivery to their areas. As a country, we’re moving to meet international standards in terms of standards of providing service in three areas namely water supply, waste water and solid waste management,” she said.

Gokwe Town Secretary, Melania Mandeya narrated how the local authority was using its limited resources to start capital projects which include construction of a primary school and a stadium.

“We’re preparing to apply for town status by 2020. Therefore we need to have these kinds of projects which will also assist council in revenue collection,” she said.

She said with a total of 25,000 residents, Gokwe had managed to construct a $69,000 town house, install 100 streetlights as well as connect over 200 units to water.