By Staff Reporter
THE African Development Bank (AfDB) has come to Mutare City Council’s rescue with a US$400 000 package that will allow the eastern border city to complete its water supply pipeline and connect Dangamvura High density suburb, among other areas.
Mutare City deputy engineer responsible for water projects, Tinashe Mutetwa said AfDB has chipped in with rescue package to finish the last two kilometres of the 450 mm glass reinforced pipeline.
Mutetwa said the rescue package will cover at least half of the requirements to complete the pipeline, indicating that ADB has since flighted adverts of the whole bill of quantity needed to finish the project.
“We got funding from the African Development Bank to finish the remaining two kilometre water pipeline. So this is going to improve water supply.
“We are looking at no timelines but we are hopeful that if all goes well that perhaps by year end this project will be complete,” said Mutetwa.
“We have a 450mm diameter pipe which is going to convey water from the 70, 5 mega liter tank at Christmas Pass. It is going to subsidise the shortfall to fill distribution tanks in Dangamvura which is five cubic meters in size. That will be able to support developments in Dangamvura.”
Mutetwa was speaking at a Zimbabwe Special Economic Zones Authority training workshop focusing on Mutare’s Special Economic Zones’ projects.
He said the AfDB has also set aside a facility to address challenges that could arise from increased pressure from housing developments in the city adding council had also reserved funds to deal with leakages.
“We have set aside US$80 000 to deal with physical losses so that increased pressure capacity will not cause rampant losses. We understand that the pipes are old so with increased pressure may escalate physical losses.
“So that issue of losses has been covered because we have set aside the fund to deal with it.
“On the non-revenue water side, lately we had a service level benchmarking exercise where officials from sister local authorities come in to assess our service and from that exercise we managed to assess our flows and from those results we are seeing an improvement. There is a drop from 67% to around 60%.”
Mutetwa added: “Our main challenge over the years has been that we have not been able to measure but as an interim measure we invested in portable floating meters so there is progressive movement on the ground.”
Town Clerk Joshua Maligwa said there have been overtures from AfDB to foot the whole bill of $ 800 000, 00 for the completion of the project.
