Short term plan to end Byo water woes

Bulawayo Bureau

The Government has availed $7 billion and a borehole drilling rig for Bulawayo as part of short to medium-term interventions to address the city’s water shortages while pushing the Lake Gwayi-Shangani project, which would start pumping water next year.

The $7 billion fund will be channelled towards repairing broken-down boreholes at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer to ensure the pumping of 16 megalitres of water per day at full throttle, and rehabilitation of critical pump stations and pipelines whose damage has seen the city losing a lot of treated water.

The Lake Gwayi-Shangani dam is seen as the long-term solution to Bulawayo’s water problems, which has seen residents going for several days with dry taps.

Addressing an inaugural meeting of the 20-member Bulawayo Water Technical Committee at Mhlahlandlela Government Complex yesterday, Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development Minister, Dr Anxious Masuka, reiterated Government’s commitment to restore basic services such as water and sanitation in Bulawayo.

He said the above interventions were part of Vision 2030, which envisages creating an upper middle-income economy.

“Government has availed $6,9 billion towards this project, as well as a drilling rig and this money will be prioritised according to this committee working closely with everyone,” said the Minister.

“We thought we needed to assist the Bulawayo City Council by putting together a committee that has very broad representation with the skills depth and experience required to accelerate the initiatives at Bulawayo council level.”

The meeting revealed that the process of tendering for the two-state treatment works, the first being 80 megalitres per day treatment work at Cowdray Park has already been completed and that is where all the water to the city will be coming from.

“The 220 megalitres a day that we will be conveyancing from Gwayi-Shangani, is enough to guarantee water for Bulawayo for the next 80 years,” said Dr Masuka.

“This is why at this stage we do not envisage going beyond Lake Gwayi-Shangani in terms of water supply for Bulawayo.”

“We would want to stabilise it and then deal with internal issues within Bulawayo, which is ensuring that the non-revenue water is reduced and that the conveyancing of water is reaching areas that we were unable to reach.

“In Cowdray Park, there are 25 000 residents that are not able to get water,” said Minister Masuka.

In her brief welcome remarks, Bulawayo Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister Judith Ncube, said Vision 2030 cannot be achieved without an adequate and reliable water supply system.

The technical water committee is chaired by Dr Engineer Annatoria Chinyama and members are drawn from the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development, civil engineers from the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa), BCC, public health practitioners, Environment Management Authority (EMA) and members of the academia.

The committee was given a 100-day working period and yesterday’s meeting marked day number 48 since its appointment.

Minister Masuka said the committee must work flat-out to make sure the city gets the extra 36 megalitres of water to boost supplies at a time when major supply dams are depleting due to poor rains.

Dr Masuka said the committee was there to complement, not replace, what the council is doing. He said the council has a geographic footprint that is limited whereas its water supplies are beyond its geographic footprint hence it became necessary to appoint a committee of this magnitude.

From the Government’s perspective, the minister said there was a need for an urgent intervention to be able to increase the water supply from 125 megalitres to 175 megalitres a day.

He said the Government was eager to stabilise the Nyamandlovu Aquifer supply system from Epping Forest and Rochester so that these can bring a constant supply of 16 megalitres a day out of the established 22 megalitres, which will allow farmers around the area to get about five to six megalitres.

“As Government, we see that we need to move from short–to medium-term solution to long-term solution, and what we have done is accelerate the Lake Gwayi-Shangani construction,” said Dr Masuka.

“The Second Republic has seen this to fruition. My perception of Government programmes is that the Lake Gwayi-Shangani construction if you look at historical and contemporary perspectives in terms of what we are doing and have done, is proceeding at lightning speed.”

At 70 percent completion within three to four years, Dr Masuka said this was a record for any Government.

“We had anticipated that it would be completed earlier, however, that was not possible because we are using our resources to do this and there are other competing national programmes, especially in an election year,” he said.

“Now that the plebiscite is over I am hoping that Gwayi-Shangani will regain its prominence and I think is possible because engineers tell me that at four metres a month, we can complete this and start impounding water in the 2024/25 season.

“The earliest we think we will be able to deliver water to Bulawayo is around late 2025 season,” said Minister Masuka.

Also in attendance at the meeting was the Bulawayo mayor, Councillor David Coltart, and his deputy, Clr Edwin Ndlovu.