MOST people in Harare have since stopped drinking water from the local authority because they believe it is unsafe, a survey by a local residents’ association has revealed.
Report by Charles Mazorodze
The survey, which was conducted by the Harare Residents’ Trust (HRT) in 15 suburbs recently, indicated that most residents now shunned water from City of Harare. Some residents are buying bottled drinking water from the shops while others get it from boreholes.
“Those residents who attempted to drink the water have been complaining about diarrhoea and stomach aches, yet the Harare City Council (HCC) makes unfounded claims that the water is clean,” said HRT.
“In the process, to conceal the dire situation which the Harare residents are subjected to, HCC has gone a step further by gagging local clinics from releasing health-related information related to water consumption.”
HRT said such a move clearly showed the lack of sincerity on the part of the city fathers to address the plight of residents.
“The authorities are failing to address the residents’ grievances and public health while the council management is munching over 52% of the collected revenue and they still admit that they have failed to perform by not providing essential public services to the heterogeneous citizenry,” said the association.
HRT said the failure by the council to provide clean water to residents of greater Harare was an exhibition of high levels of incompetence and mismanagement.
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The association said the magnitude of the water crisis in Harare required direct intervention by the central government through the Health, Water Resources and the Local Government, Rural and Urban Development ministries, to engage the local authority.
Residents living in uncertainity
Most western suburbs and northern suburbs have not had city water for a long time.
Residents in most western, northern and southern suburbs and the generality of the residents have lost confidence in HCC’s water.
The association said residents were receiving a barrage of letters of final demand and summons in most high- density suburbs, which council is using to intimidate and frighten residents into settling unreasonable and unjustifiable bills.
The trust condemned HCC for trying to recover money from residents for services which they were not providing.
“Residents are living in uncertainty as council has gone behind the back of residents to seek court orders in order to continue to fleece them,” said the association.
This is mostly common in suburbs such as Mabvuku, Glen View, Kuwadzana, Kuwadzana Phase 3, Tafara, Highfield, Mufakose, Rugare and Kambuzuma. In 1999, the late Harare Mayor Alderman Solomon Tawenga’s administration was fired after failing to provide water to Harare residents for six days, owing to corruption and rampant mismanagement of public resources.
“The honourable co-urse of action for Mayor Muchadeyi Masunda and the Town Clerk Tendai Mahachi administration, which has failed to provide clean and potable water to the residents for over three years, is to tender their resignation en masse,” said the association.
“How do they continue to justify being in charge of Harare if they continue to admit that they have run short of ideas to deal with residents’ problems? Yet they continue to take residents’ money.”
The water crisis has resulted in the outbreak of waterborne diseases such as typhoid and cholera in the past few years. Over 4 000 people died from cholera from the end of 2008 to 2009.
Efforts to get a comment from council spo-kesperson Leslie Gwindi were fruitless. But the council is said to have appealed to government for help as its infrastructure is failing to cope with demand, leaving residents without supplies for days.
