By Edward Makuzva
Harare City Council has shut down its water treatment plant, Morton Jaffray waterworks, due to incapacitation.
The move was announced by acting Mayor, Councilor Enock Mupamawonde, Monday morning, and this call comes at a time when the water works plant has closed severely affecting its water production posing a serious humanitarian catastrophe in the city of Harare.
Acting Mayor Mupamawonde pleaded with the Government heed to calls by City of Harare, Civic society and Residents Associations to declare Water a National Disaster.
“The city of Harare is facing a number of challenges which have resulted in failure to resolve the water and sanitation provision within the city and this has contributed to the decline in the health status of residents”, Mupamawonde explained.
He added that the challenges include absence of a billing system, and hence, poor collection of rates as well as reduced capacity to implement programmes that enhance service delivery.
Posting on their twitter account yesterday, the Council announced that the city has run out of key water treatment chemicals and is at the moment stretching the little available resources to treat and provide limited supplies of water.
“If no urgent bail out is given today and Tuesday, management will be forced to shut down Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Plant”, read the statement.
The statement said the council is buying foreign currency on the runaway interbank exchange marketrates a stagnant and flexible budget.
Speaking at a Policy Dialogue organised by Community Water Alliance, CHRA Director, Ms Loreen Mupasiri Sani, lamented on the poor economic performance in both the City of Harare and Central Government and hence there is need to declare water a national disaster to allow international organizations to chip in and assist the city council on humanitarian ground.
This comes after the government of Zimbabwe allocated a paltry of $37million RTGs when local authority requires US 700 million to rehabilitate water infrastructure for the improvement of water supplies.
Sani added the city now requires $ 45million RTGs for water purification only, currently of the 1 billion RTGs debt owed to the city of Harare, 45 percent of this debt is owed by the Government. So the government that is failing to service its debt with the city council mustgive heed to the calls by City of Harare and declare the water crisis a national disaster.
Posting on his Blog , Founder and Coordinator of Harare Residents Trust, Precious Shumba said Harare City Council will make progress as far as water purification and other service provision if the management and councilors do not interfere each other work and in the execution of their mandates.
“Most bureaucrats in Harare claim that their work is being interfered with by Councillors, who are supposed to be policymakers. Under the current system of local government, Councillors and the Mayor are not supposed to be full time workers of the Council.
“Under normal circumstances, Councillors should be working elsewhere and only coming to council to attend to Council business”, Shumbaexplained.
Meanwhile, Shumba said Councilors have reportedly been pushing their bureaucrats to organise as many workshops outside Harare for their personal gain. Such councilors need torefocus their energies in find lasting solutions, to service delivery challenges without looking at their political affiliations.
As long as they refuse to take full responsibility for their work at Town House, nothing will succeed.
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