World Water Day: Nothing to celebrate about

particularly in urban areas.
Zimbabwe last week joined the rest of the world in celebrating World Water Day, commemorated every March 22 since 1992.
The day, set aside by the United Nations, reflects on the importance of water and stresses the need to conserve and use it wisely.
This year’s theme was “Water and Food Security”.
However, the celebrations came against the backdrop of renewed health fears from people drinking contaminated water, rising levels of water pollution and general limited access to clean safe drinking water countrywide.
Other long-term threats are coming from limited financial spending on water infrastructure, high treatment costs, as well as from climate change, which has resulted in frequent droughts versus greater water demand from an expanding population, crops and animals.
Vague statistics from the Ministry of Water Resources Development and Management say 73 percent of the population use improved drinking water sources, quoting a 2009 Multiple Monitoring Indicators Survey jointly conducted by Zimstats and Unicef.
It further said that 98 percent of those without an improved drinking water source were people living in rural areas with only 28 percent of the rural population using drinking water appropriately treated at household level.
The survey said only 35 percent of the population used drinking water appropriately treated at household level irrespective of source.
Over the past 10 years, access to safe water and sanitation had declined significantly.
Indeed, statistics are good, especially for those sitting high up the ladder of society waiting to observe and analyse the suffering of those at the bottom.
But being a statistic ourselves, we speak only of what we know, what we have seen and what we have experienced. And what we have experienced is a day-to-day struggle for access to clean, safe and reliable water supplies.
People are reluctantly exposed to dirty, contaminated drinking water in most urban centres in Zimbabwe, which provides a perfect breeding ground for disease.
Typhoid is spreading freely in Harare, and despite efforts by authorities to control it, the water-borne disease has since managed to snuff out no less than 10 lives.
Cases of bizarre, unexplained diarrhoea are not uncommon.
Health officials have even banned the people from eating and selling fish from Lake Chivero, Harare’s main water source, which is quickly being reduced to a pond of sewage due to rampant pollution.
The fish are believed to be contaminated. Most of the suburbs in the capital city are always without water for very long periods in a day.
When they do, it is dirty, presenting with a green, brown like thick coating, which smells like poop. It is faecal matter running through our tapes.
People are, as a matter of fact, drinking poop, literally.
Some areas like Mabvuku in Harare have gone for several months without running tap water.
They depend on water from unprotected sources like open wells littered throughout the high-density suburb. A number of safer boreholes have been sunk only in recent months, however.
In rural areas, numerous people, especially women, still travel very long distances on foot to fetch water.
The Harare City Council, guilty also of polluting its own water bodies, says it is too broke to provide clean water citing high treatment costs, according to Press reports.
The council has been forced to depend on donations from the United Nations Children’s Fund to meet part of the expenses.
Harare provides only half of the 1 200 megalitres of water needed daily by its residents.
That’s what people in Harare, and of course by extension, in Chitungwiza, Norton, Ruwa and other urban areas were “celebrating” on World Water Day.
Of course, there has been some noticeable improvement in water quality since the cholera days of 2008/09, which killed 4 000 people.
But the state of the country’s water sector remains a major challenge, said Mr Butholezwe Nyathi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Water Resources Development and Management in an interview last week.
The impacts of climate change on water resources were severe, he said, urging people to start adopting and practising clean smart agriculture, which requires less water for food production.
“ . . . water supply infrastructure remains a challenge,” Mr Nyathi said. “Pipes are old and frequently burst leading to loss of water. As a result a lot of water by local authorities goes unaccounted for (no revenue received).
“Electricity is a challenge, as Government coffers are currently limited. Private funding is not to our expectations.
“The capacity of some of our indigenous contractors is questionable leading to delays in the implementation and conclusion of projects.
“However, we have engaged our co-operating partners who have supported us over the years. Unicef, for instance, has since 2009 been supplying chemicals to local authorities and Zinwa.
“In May we will roll out an extensive borehole drilling programme in rural areas, which is a joint effort by Government and co-operating partners.”
Some progress in other areas within the national water supply chain had been registered over the past three years.
Mr Nyathi said Harare was now supplying water to more high- and low-density suburbs than was the case in 2009.
The City of Bulawayo had been connected to the Nyamandlovu aquifer while the Mtshabezi pipeline was expected to be complete by mid-year.
Waterworks in towns such as Rusape, Mhangura, Beitbridge and Gweru had been upgraded, he said, which increased their water supply capacities.
Asked about the future of the water sector in the country, Mr Nyathi said it was “very bright”, citing an abundance of technical capacity at the Zimbabwe National Water Authority. “ . . . .as more financial resources are availed to the water sector by treasury and private investors, more gains in terms of water and sanitation coverage will be recorded.
“We will implement more dam and water supply projects, as captured in the ministry’s investment prospectus,” he said. There is now a greater demand for water in a world with less and less.
“As the world population is expected to hit nine billion by 2050, the efficient use of water is paramount.”
Water is a resource of critical importance without which humanity and animals would not live.
Worldwide, unsafe water causes four billion cases of diarrhoea, and results in 2,2 million deaths yearly, mostly of children under five years of age, according to the World Health Organisation.
In 2002, WHO estimated that “more people die from unsafe water annually than all forms of violence, including war”.
God is faithful.