The petition was handed to President Robert Mugabe, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai as well as the ministries of Local Government Rural and Urban Development, Water Resources Development and Health and Child Welfare, in addition to the mayors of Harare and Chitungwiza.
“We, the undersigned citizens and represented Civil Society Organisations, do hereby petition the Government of Zimbabwe through the relevant ministries and local authorities to immediately set up effective strategies to address the recurring problems of the outbreak of the typhoid fever and cholera in Zimbabwe,” read part of the petition.
Addressing a press conference in Harare this afternoon, Abel Chikomo, the Director of Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, said they had so far gathered 1 795 signatures from concerned Zimbabweans, adding that the petition was still open.
The CSOs are targeting one million signatures. They said the outbreaks had become a disturbing pattern caused mainly by dereliction of duty by government departments.
The CSOs demanded that government immediately set up a commission of inquiry to investigate the occurrence of the outbreaks throughout the country and recommend solutions that would bring an end to the problem.
The government, the CSOs said, should come up with long term strategies that include a clear plan for the provision of clean water and the mobilization of funds and technical resources.
Harare Residents Trust Chairperson, Precious Shumba, said the lack of political will by the country’s leaders to address the water crisis in the country had led to the unnecessary loss of life to the ‘‘medieval time diseases’’ that could have been prevented.
“The lack of political will speaks volumes about Zimbabwe’s preparedness to address the situation,” he said. He said the government should have learnt from experiences of the 2008 cholera outbreak that killed 4000 people.
Shumba said while the 2008 outbreak was understandable because the country had a ‘‘rogue regime’’ not interested in its people, it was unacceptable for the inclusive government to fail to address the issue.
‘The expectation was that the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Local Government … would have managed to deal with the issue. It is unjustifiable at this stage to speak of cholera when we have a coalition government,’ he said.
Simbarashe Moyo of the Combined Harare Residents Association said local authorities had no excuse for failing to deliver portable water to residents who were paying for services.
He said the city of Harare was getting a grant of one million Euro from Munich every year, and should have used that money to ensure residents got safe water.
´It is a question of what went wrong. There was misuse and abuse and this is classified as failure by authorities to address archaic diseases which other countries no longer talk about,” he said.
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