Chronicle Editor
Vincent Gono, News Editor
PRESIDENT Mnangagwa has lamented the decay of service delivery in the opposition-run local authorities saying the continued outbreak of diarrhoeal diseases such as cholera was an inexcusable indictment on the country’s poor social service delivery record which should be dealt with.
He said his Government has started making urgent interventions with the mapping of the 35 000 villages in the country having been completed setting in motion the speedy rolling out a nationwide borehole drilling programme to ensure that each of the 35 000 villages have access to clean, safe drinking water points which would be solar-powered and attached a community nutritional garden.
He said such a countrywide intervention, which should be completed within a year, guarantees the defeat of cholera, while fortifying nutritional levels in all communities. Writing in his weekly column in this paper, the President said the far-flung programme coupled with the ongoing dam construction programme and the development of irrigation projects in every district was uppermost during his second term, as part of the Integrated Rural Development Strategy as the nation strains towards the realisation of our Vision 2030.
He said it was sad that the rapid pace of rural urbanisation had not been matched by the development of modern amenities and infrastructures which deliver clean, safe drinking water, and which ensure modern and efficient reticulation and waste management technologies and systems.
“Our towns and cities have been run down precipitously, thanks to gross maladministration by opposition-controlled local authorities. Clean and safe drinking water is either unavailable or erratically supplied. Garbage collection services are largely dysfunctional, while broken sewers are a common sight, especially in our high-density suburbs. To compound it all, unplanned and uncontrolled settlements have created a runaway urban sprawl where uncontrolled human settlements have outpaced the provision of basic services which guarantee public health and essential amenities,” said the President.
He added that it was unfortunate that backbone infrastructure for water supply and reticulation in most towns and cities was broken, struggling or outrightly non-existent. The President noted that water supply crises in most urban settlements were not explained by absence of water bodies, rather, they were explained by water conveyancing systems which were either non-existent, inadequate, inefficient, obsolete and decrepit.
“The same also goes for uncollected garbage and broken sewer systems. In the absence of a drastic renovation of all our local authorities in the country, Zimbabwe will continue to suffer periodic outbreaks of preventable diseases, in spite of her many unused water bodies. The lasting solution to chronic cholera outbreaks lies more in our service delivery level than in drugs, hospitals and clinics, themselves interventions of cure after preventive methods have already failed.”
President Mnangagwa said it was worrying that the dysfunctional local authorities were defeating the country’s professed goal of ensuring no one and no community was left behind, adding that the completion of Lake Gwayi-Shangani and Kunzvi Dam required efficient and honest municipalities for benefits of such massive water investments to reach each household.
“I am happy that the Ministry of Local Government is now seized with this challenge of ensuring all our local authorities, regardless of who controls them, become functional and responsive to the public health needs of residents. We have lost enough lives already to hefty public health failures which could have been prevented by the provision of efficient services and amenities.”
He added that he was delighted that Bindura University of Science Education was already producing chemicals for water
Bongani Ndlovu