BULAWAYO mayor Thaba Moyo yesterday rejected Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo’s recent accusation that the local authority was not doing enough to ease the city’s water woes.
Report by Pamela Mhlanga, Own correspondent
Chombo on Wednesday told journalists during his tour of the Mtshabezi water pipeline project that Bulawayo city fathers were failing to “reciprocate government efforts by managing water properly”.
“I will tell Parliament that some of the councillors that they give us are out of depth and are not giving us linkages, they are not managing the raw water that is being given to them,” he said. But Moyo described the remarks as “out of sync” with the reality on the ground, adding Bulawayo City Council had “no control over the amount of rainfall that fell in the region”.
“We are not rainmakers,” Moyo told NewsDay yesterday.
He attributed the water woes, which have forced council to introduce a 72-hour weekly water-shedding regime, to the region’s erratic rainfall.
“People have to understand that we are not the ones who control the atmospheric conditions in the region, so we are not rainmakers,” he said.
“A person who attacks the city council and makes claims that the council is failing to provide the people of Bulawayo with water must himself or herself provide that water for the people and we see if that person will manage. The water crisis that has affected the people of Bulawayo is due to drought and that is beyond the powers of the city council.”
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Already, two of Bulawayo’s five supply dams have been decommissioned with the third set to be decommissioned early next year if the dry conditions persist.
