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Zambezi commission set to meet

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THE Zambezi Watercourse Commission (Zamcom) has announced that it will hold its first technical committee meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, tomorrow.

THE Zambezi Watercourse Commission (Zamcom) has announced that it will hold its first technical committee meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, tomorrow.

By the Staff Reporter

Zimbabwe has vested interests in the commission because of its ambitious programme to draw water from the Zambezi River under its 100-year-old Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project.

The project is meant to ease water problems in Bulawayo where residents are currently undergoing a 96-hour water-shedding regime each week.

Zamcom spokesperson Leonissah Munjoma in a statement yesterday said representatives from the eight member countries that share the Zambezi River basin were expected to attend the meeting.

“The Zamtec (Zamcom Technical Committee) meeting is expected to pave way for the governing of the organisation whose objective is to promote the equitable and reasonable utilisation of the water resources of the Zambezi Watercourse as well as the efficient management and sustainable development thereof,” Munjoma said.

“Chief among the issues for discussion will be concrete steps on operationalisation of the Zamcom agreement and financial resource mobilisation for the organisation’s activities. Executive secretary for the interim Zamcom secretariat, Michael Mutale, has described the meeting as a landmark occasion for co-operation in the Zambezi River basin. It has taken eight years from the signing of the agreement in 2004 to this event which marks the beginning of permanency in the governing of operations in the Zambezi River basin using the Zamcom agreement as a guide and drawn in line with the revised Sadc Protocol on Shared Watercourses.”

The Zamcom secretariat is based in Botswana.The Zamcom agreement, signed by the majority of the Zambezi Riparian States at Kasane in Botswana in 2004, came into force last year.

It has three governing organs, namely the Council of Ministers, Zamcom Technical Committee (Zamtec) and the Zamcom secretariat.