Residents, Fidelity clash over water provision

Blessings Chidakwa Municipal Correspondent

Southview Park residents have revived their fight against Fidelity Life Assurance, which they accuse of failing to deliver water to them over the past eight years.

The residents expressed their displeasure in a letter that was sent to the company’s management through their chairperson Mr Albiona Shava.

“We feel that the company is failing to fulfil its contractual obligation to provide a habitable area on the Southview project,” he said.

“We note with concern the never ending shifting of goal posts by Fidelity on this important matter (running water). There is serious lack of sincerity from Fidelity. You first promised us water in December 2018, then May 2019, then December 2019, then May this year and now we have a December target, which was never on the table when we met in December last year.”

Mr Shava said residents were extremely disappointed with the progress at the water offsite project and gave the company up to the end of next month or face legal action.

“Access to safe, sufficient and physically accessible water is a basic human right which should always be respected,” he said.

“The current Constitution of Zimbabwe in its Declaration of Rights enshrines socio-economic rights and among them is the right to water. Kindly take note that since 2016, the number of residents in Southview Park is increasing on a daily basis. Currently, the community has more than 4 000 residents without access to water.”

Mr Shava said the low rains received 2018-2019 season and the 2019-20 season have not helped since shallow wells in the area have already started drying up.

“Residents do not want apologies, they want water in their homes,” he said. “The current situation is a potential health hazard and might result in cholera and typhoid outbreaks that have claimed many lives in Harare in recent years.”

Fidelity Life Assurance general manager marketing Melanie Gumbo said the project had been delayed because the offsite water works required the procurement of materials (PVC and GRP pipes) not available in Zimbabwe.

“In order to complete the works we had to procure all the requisite foreign building materials,” she said. “The acute unavailability of foreign currency in this country, which is public knowledge, resulted in significant delays in importing the required foreign piping material, which is beyond our control.”

Mrs Gumbo said they were pleased to advise residents that they had now imported all the required foreign piping material.

“Assuming that there are no other unforeseen disruptions, perhaps coming from the Covid-19 pandemic, and the contractor resumes work, we expect to complete the water works by December 2020,” she said.

On boreholes, Mrs Gumbo said until the water pipeline was completed, they will endeavour to drill and service an adequate number of boreholes to provide water to the residents.

“We engaged a private company to monitor, repair and regularly service the boreholes,” she said. “We confirm that there were disruptions and service delays during the first six weeks of the national lockdown due to limited access to hardware shops and restrictions on general movement of people.”