adminMichael Magoronga Midlands Correspondent
Kwekwe City Council has engaged the services of a German company, GMI, in a bid to plug non-revenue water that is reportedly hovering around between 50 and 55 percent.
The mining town is losing large quantities of purified water to leakages due to vandalism of water pipes with illegal gold panners who use the water in processing their gold ore, the major culprits.
Speaking during a recent full council meeting, Mayor Angeline Kasipo, said the company was coming in to offer technical support to the local authority.
“We are engaging with GMI, a German company, in a move that is fruitful as it would offer us technical support since we do not have capital to purchase the required material to repair all the vandalised pipes,” she said.
“It’s not a company per se but an organisation that offered its assistance in identifying areas that might need attendance. They have the technology that we do not have and I think it will come in handy,” she said.
She said the local authority was losing large amounts of treated water due to vandalism and obsolete pipes.
“As you are aware in the town, we are faced with serious challenges where gold panners vandalise the pipes in search for the treated water that they use in processing their gold ore. But besides that we also have old pipes that have been there since the colonial era that also need to be replaced. So we are looking forward to the company offering us the technical expertise that we so require at this moment,” she said.
Mayor Kasipo, however, said the financially hamstrung local authority was looking at cheaper ways of curbing the leakages.
“Most of the pipes need attention but because we do not have adequate funding, we need to identify the areas that need urgent attention first that would be attended to first. But because we do not have enough money, we cannot attend to them all at once,” she said.
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