Harare wants billions to restore water supplies

Harare wants billions to restore water supplies

HARARE

• Raw sewage contaminates Harare water

• Schools shut as Bulawayo runs dry

By Agencies

THE Harare city council will borrow Z$50bn (about R62m) to restore water to parts of the city which get just six hours' supply a day.

A Sapa correspondent reported on Monday that the move follows the resignation of all opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) councillors this month.

The MDC-dominated city council complained that central government had made it impossible to govern because of interference and the withholding of much needed funds.

Water supplies to the Zimbabwean capital have seen a steady decline over the last 12 months, though the city's main dams and reservoirs all reported high levels of water in storage.

Harare's director of works, Psychology Chiwanga, said faulty water treatment plants and broken pumping equipment were to blame for the crisis, the first in the city's 100-year-long history.

Still, many residents in the city of about four million people said they were not even receiving six hours' of water supply a day.

"I have had no water for over two weeks," said Philip Chikwenya, an executive living in Harare's wealthy Borrowdale suburb.

"My whole family is forced to bath at different friends' houses."

In the poor eastern township of Mabvuku, Gladys Takawira, who supports five children, said: "We rarely have water, even for cooking it is a problem. Often we must get dirty water from rivers, but we are afraid of cholera."

Council workers complained that they were keeping ageing equipment working in an effort to keep supplies trickling through to the thirsty city. Some of the equipment is over 50 years old and obsolete, they said.
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