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Ruth Butaumocho, African Tapestry
AN eighteen-year-old lady joins a long queue of women seeking to fetch water from a man-made hole, a stone’s throw from the algae-invested Manyame River.
Although it is just after 3am, with no signs of dawn, the queue is already stretching for more than 100 meters.
More footsteps can be heard, as scores of people clutching empty buckets make their way to the “well”.
When her turn comes, the young lady quickly takes her position and bends to fill the bucket, before other people start complaining.
Using a metal plate, she patiently scoops water to fill one of her three empty plastic buckets.
With the growing queue of people patiently waiting for their turn to draw water from the same hole, she increases her speed. Sadly, for her, the trickle does not correspond to her speed.
Her story speaks to the plight of millions of people countrywide, who are grappling with water challenges.
Zimbabwe is faced with a major water crisis, as water levels in most dams continue to drop.
With possibilities of erratic rains, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) is already raising a red flag saying the situation is dire and has since started water rationing.
The drop in water levels has been attributed to high temperatures, low to no inflows and water draw-downs for irrigation and domestic, which are greater than the rate of inflows.
Suffice to say, the latest development will further worsen water woes in cities like Chitungwiza that have been failing to provide regular supplies to thousands of residents for years now.
Years of poor planning by local authorities, corruption, failure to invest in water plants, neglect of water sources and abuse of wetlands have undoubtedly contributed to the national water crisis.
It is not a secret that cities like Harare and Chitungwiza have been dogged by water woes for more than two decades. Water problems in these cities are largely due to poor planning on the part of local authorities.
Money meant for capital projects has on several occasions been diverted to trivia, while water systems continued to collapse.
Several reports have been written on the need to rehabilitate water and sewer systems, which were on the verge of collapse to ensure that millions of people do not drink contaminated water from underground sources.
As a result, the quality and quantity of water supplied to urban centres has plummeted in recent years and has assumed crisis proportions, which has created the situation that the country finds itself in today.
Years of neglect and haphazard water plants upgrades, albeit cosmetic and dilapidated infrastructure have resulted in polluted water, which needs over 20 different chemicals to be treated being pumped to residents.
Harare City Council has on several occasions admitted that it loses 65 percent of all the water it is purifying to leaks.
Council says that the city needs 1 400 megalitres daily, but the best it can do is to provide 650 megalitres – less than half the required amount.
Despite such a challenge, the city fathers have been implementing piece-meal solutions, while diverting millions of dollars to overseas junkets and other trinkets.
Without investing in proper plant upgrades, water woes were bound to catch up with Harare City Council because it a water supply system that was built in 1956 to cater for just 250 00 people, about a tenth of its now ballooned population.
The situation is even worse for Chitungwiza, where residents are fetching water from the Manyame River and other unprotected sources, because the local authority has not been pumping water into their homes for months.
The thirst indeed has grown and has serious ramifications, which could result in water-borne diseases reminiscent of 2008.
The country experienced one of its worst cholera outbreaks to date in 2008, where more than 5 000 people lost their lives, as the pandemic swept across some of the country’s major cities, with Chitungwiza among the worst affected areas.
The outbreak, which began in August 2008, swept across the country and spread to Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia, threatening to decimate the huge regional populace.
The cholera outbreak was worsened by the collapse of the urban water supply systems and uncollected garbage, along with the onset of the rainy season leading to faeces with cholera bacteria being washed into water sources.
The tragedy of the national water crisis is that it will not only reawaken the 2008 disaster, but will naturally worsen the existing situation of water woes, putting the lives of millions of people at risk.
It would be prudent for Cabinet to broaden the mandate of the inter-ministerial committee set up to resolve the Harare water supply situation, to have a national approach.
Broadening the inter-ministerial’ s mandate allows it to come up with comprehensive plans with time frames that can be put in place to address water shortages in the short to long-term.
The immediate task would be the holistic rehabilitation of water plants like Harare’s Morton Jaffray to improve efficiency and output, while reducing the levels of pollution.
One of the long-term solutions would be the construction of new water supply dams, which would bolster supplies.
Concerted efforts by local authorities, residents and other stakeholders to reduce polluted material being dumped in some of the country’s water sources, could ameliorate water challenges.
Water provision is a critical service that should not be left to local authorities and other stakeholders, but should also be at the core of Government’s areas of concern, hence its decision to bail out Harare City Council late last year.
With each day presenting new challenges, residents are now silently praying for the rains, which they hope will bring the much-needed relief.
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