TRIANGLE Situated on the Masvingo-Chiredzi Highway, the town of Triangle has a population less than 10 000-strong, which is comprised of mostly sugar plantation workers.
Driving through the 10 km stretch of town, there are well-built houses, lush green sugar plantations and a vibrant sugar processing factory. As a sign of efficient service provision, the roads leading into the parts of the town are clean and well maintained.
A conversation with one of the residents of the town confirms the good living standards. We do not need to go to another town to get anything, we have everything here, said the resident, who identified himself as Mapinga. In contrast to this urban plenitude where all of the water is channelled into the sugar estates, the rural side of Triangle is an entirely different story.
Dry and lifeless, villagers have to scramble for the little water that is left in small dams that fill during the rainy season. Unlike the huge companies that have built water retaining infrastructure to service the town, villagers are still forced to look for water from natural sources.
While some Non Government Organisations have built boreholes to ease the water shortages, villagers still travel more than five kilometres to access it. With over a month without any rain, the crops are drying up and starvation is looming once again for the Chiredzi- Triangle communities. The government should do something for us, even if it means finishing the Tokwe Murkosi Dam in two days, said 66-year-old Marlven Chikandiwa.
Construction of the Tokwe Murkosi dam, whose completion is seen as the only solution to the water crisis in the Lowveld area, started in the 1990s and is still to be completed. In this years national budget, Finance Minister Tendai Biti allocated US$7 million for the dam project. However, work is yet to resume amid revelations that the allocation falls short of the needed US$150 million dollars for completion.
Tokwe-Murkosi Dam has a potential to irrigate over 25 000 hectares in the Masvingo South areas to end the perennial drought-induced food shortages. The dam will become Zimbabwe’s largest inland water body with a holding capacity of about 1.2 billion cubic metres of water.
Post published in: News