HARARE City Council is battling to provide potable water to the capital due to biting shortage of water treatment chemicals resulting in residents scrounging for the precious liquid from unprotected sources.
REPORT BY MOSES MATENGA STAFF REPORTER
In most residential areas there has been no running water for nearly a month.
The water crisis has affected residents in Harare’s western suburbs, east, northern areas, the central business district and Mbare, among other areas, raising fears of a cholera outbreak reminiscent of the 2008 epidemic that claimed over 4 000 lives countrywide.
Harare Water director Engineer Christopher Zvobgo said the crisis was due to shortage of chemicals hence council could not pump untreated water to the residents.
“It will be criminal for me to allow that (pumping of untreated water) to happen. I can’t put millions of people in Harare at risk and if we face a situation of shortage of chemicals, it’s only fair to reduce production levels than to put the lives of people at risk,” Zvobgo told NewsDay yesterday.
“There are codes of conduct that I should follow and if I were to do that (pump untreated water), I get arrested.”
Zvobgo was responding to criticism by residents’ associations that council was pumping untreated water to residents, endangering their lives by exposing them to deadly diseases.
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Council spokesperson Leslie Gwindi, however, said they had received supplies from Zimphos who have replaced Mashwede, the local authority’s long-standing chemical supplier, after a ministerial directive last year, but conceded that the new supplier had “its own issues”.
“We have a water problem emanating from breakdowns and over the weekend we shut down for check-ups. We received chemicals on Monday and we were low on supply of aluminium sulphate, but we took supplies yesterday (Monday).
“We usually don’t want a two-day supply we are taking from Zimphos now, but they have their own issues, (but) what we have said is that will not stop us from getting alternatives,” Gwindi said.
The Combined Harare Residents’ Association and Harare Residents’ Trust (HRT) have accused the local authority of providing untreated water to residents and putting their lives at risk.
The HRT alleged that they had received confidential information from workers within the department that the city was pumping water without treating.
“According to reliable sources, the water treatment chemicals ran out around Christmas and they no longer get chemicals from Mashwede. The new chemical suppliers have demanded cash upfront from the City of Harare, forcing the local authority to take the unprecedented risk of pumping untreated or partially treated water,” the HRT claimed last week.
Mbada Diamonds last Thursday donated chlorinators worth $150 000 to purify water in over 235 boreholes around Harare.
