Chronicle Editor
Mashudu Netsianda, Senior Reporter
THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has received a timely boost towards addressing persistent water woes after signing a major deal with a Dutch company, Vitens Evides International (VEI) for additional funding for its key water projects.
Water levels in Bulawayo’s six supply dams Umzingwane, Inyankuni, Mtshabezi, Upper Ncema and lower Ncema have remained low despite comparatively good rains received between late last year to early this year.
The local authority recently warned of imminent water shedding owing to the prevailing dry spell.
VEI started to work with BCC in 2017 under a Nuffic-sponsored training project and in 2018, a Water Operator’s Partnership (WOP) under the umbrella of WaterWorX (WWX) started.
The WWX WOP is expected to contribute positively to sustainable development goal (SDG)6 in Bulawayo through focusing on improving operational and financial performance as well as increasing access to and reliability of water supply to all consumers.
One of the target projects is reduction of non-revenue water by developing an adequate assessment and implementation framework.
Bulawayo Town Clerk Mr Christopher Dube and VEI regional manager Ms Emma Lesterhuis signed the deal on behalf of council and the Dutch organisation respectively.
Phase two of the project runs until December 2026.
Speaking during the signing ceremony at the council chambers yesterday Bulawayo mayor, Councillor Solomon Mguni, said the objective was to sustainably provide water and sanitation services to residents at an improved level.
“It’s important that we consider work processes that will ensure achievement of the turnaround for the City of Bulawayo.
Organisation and strategy processes such as stakeholder management, leadership development, strategic business planning . . . performance management planning, target setting and evaluation, human resources management and development inclusion will be key for Bulawayo to attain its desired maturity target levels,” he said.
“During the second phase it is critical for us to improve on technical sub-processes namely, water quality monitoring, water source protection management, energy efficiency, operation and maintenance production, water distribution planning and monitoring, district metering areas, water distribution hydraulics modelling and non-revenue water management information systems.”
Clr Mguni said through the WOP, long-term climate resilient water supply for Bulawayo will be able to move from the current maturity level of 2,7 to a level of 4,4.
“It’s my hope that we will fulfil the project objectives and work together in ensuring that the city attains its vision of a leading smart transformative city by 2024,” he said.
Clr Mguni said the process towards the second phase of the programme planning has been ongoing for the past few months with various teams from council taking part in the water operator tool kit assessments.
Under the first phase, which ran from 2017 to 2021, significant SDG 6 achievements were registered with the project having provided 5 700 households in Cowdray Park with basic water services.
A total of 1 395 people have so far benefited from direct safely managed sanitation services. During the same period the city also managed to get technical and financial assistance in the management of water, non-revenue water and in the creation of an enabling environment among other aspects.
Ms Lesterhuis said the partnership between BCC and her organisation was part of the WaterWorX programme aimed at reaching and sustaining services to 10 million people by 2030, the target year of the sustainable development goals.
“In Bulawayo we started this partnership in 2019 and part of this project, I was able to visit pilot district metering areas to improve service delivery, introduced a new asset management system to improve on pro-active maintenance and investment planning and we worked to connect more than 7 000 households in Cowdray Park to water and a first part also to sewer,” she said.
Ms Lesterhuis said the partnership will make an impact and improve service delivery to citizens and ensure that people have access to water and sanitation. — @mashnets
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