BULAWAYO residents have resorted to hoarding water to deal with the many days they go without supplies as the water situation in the city remains critical.
REPORT BY BY MUSA DUBE
The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) introduced water shedding last year, resulting in water supplies being cut off for 72 hours a week. The move however, is doing little to save water since residents are filling up many containers, whenever supplies are resumed.
A survey by this paper revealed that many residents were keeping large quantities of water in big containers such as drums, tanks and buckets. The situation has left the authorities in a quandary as the residents are now using more water than before.
“I bought these containers to store water so that it can sustain me for the next three days until supplies resume,” said a Tshabalala resident, who identified herself as MaNcube.
Another resident, Richard Phiri, said he had to buy four drums to store water due to the worsening water crisis.
“We are about 20 people who stay at our house, so imagine if we are to stay with no water for three days, it would be a disaster,” said Phiri.
Water Resources Development and Management minister, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo said efforts to save the little available water were proving fruitless due to the hoarding of the precious liquid whenever it was available.
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He said the city could only supply about 95 megalitres a day but residents were still consuming an average of 110 megalitres.
“Some residents now hoard water whenever it is available. They are filling every possible container, including bath-tubs. When the water comes back, they empty those containers by watering their gardens and refill them, which goes on to affect the daily consumption figures because instead of reducing, we are clearly wasting a lot of water,” said Nkomo recently.
The City of Bulawayo adopted the water shedding programme last year after some of its supply dams ran out of water.
The city has five supply dams and of these only, Insiza, Lower Ncema and Inyankuni are currently servicing the city.
The other two dams, Umzingwane and Upper Ncema were decommissioned last year.
The city council adopted water shedding after noting that consumption of water was beyond the levels that could be extracted daily from the dams.
Mtshabezi dam has long been touted as a short-term solution to Bulawayo’s perennial water problems. Accessing Mtshabezi water was expected to reduce retaining to two days a week.
However, due to sporadic power cuts, mainly at the dam’s pumping station, only a fraction of the required water was being drawn daily.
