Chitungwiza needs water

The erratic water supplies have been precipitated by power cuts by the countrys sole electricity provider, Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA), which is currently carrying out routine maintenance work at Kariba Power Station.

Harare claims that since the beginning of the yearly maintenance work by ZESA on Wednesday last week, its water pumping capacity has fallen from the required 1,200 megalitres to 600 megalitres per day.

Harare City Council Spokesperson Leslie Gwindi cast a gloomy picture when he said that levels in most of the reservoirs have fallen and that if the power cuts continue Harare would run dry.

We have electrical supply challenges that are affecting operations at Morton Jeffrey Water Works. The problem affects the whole of Harare. As long as there are power cuts, we will have an acute water shortage in all suburbs, he said.

However, before the beginning of the maintenance work at Kariba Chitungwiza had been without water, forcing residents to rely on wells and boreholes that were sunk by UNICEF at the height of the cholera outbreak in 2008-9.

Efforts to get a comment from Chitungwiza Town Clerk Godfrey Tanyanyiwa were fruitless. Residents have called for their own dams that are not in the hands of the municipality. Memories of the fatal cholera outbreak are still fresh in the minds of many residents who lost family and friends in 2008 and Chitungwiza residents are impatient with the excuses offered by

the authorities.

ZESA has in the past reiterated that it is not solely to blame for the water woes, citing burst pipes and leakages in Harare as among many reasons why Harare fails to adequately supply water.

Fullard Gwasira, ZESA spokesperson, assured the nation that power supplies would return to normal after the maintenance programme.