The council has been shutting down the water treatment
plant over the past years for various reasons, including routine maintenance,
but that has failed to translate into increased water supplies to suburbs.
A notice to residents yesterday said; “The Harare City
Council would like to notify residents and stakeholders that there will be a
shutdown at Morton Jaffray and Warren Control Waterworks scheduled from 4pm on
Friday 18 December up to Sunday 20 December 2020,” it said.
“The shutdown is to enable our contractors to install new
water pumps. The department will also be taking advantage of this critical
shutdown to undertake other critical outstanding maintenance works.”
Residents have been urged to use available water sparingly
during the period. The Harare City Council said the successful completion of
the works will reduce physical water losses obtaining at the moment.
But residents turned to Harare’s Facebook page and slammed
the city for the endless water woes.
Edmore Chitumba said: “That was long overdue besides tagara
tisina mvura (we already don’t have water) for long ibvai magadzira (also
repair the) bust pipe at Corner Kirkman (now Solomon Mujuru Drive) and Harare
Drive.”
Mtahwa Tee George said for some residents, shutting down
the water works or not, they will still not have water.
Hannah McCormick said: “We haven’t been getting water
regularly, so I doubt we’ll even notice the difference.” The Harare City
Council has often been accused of failing to deliver portable water to
residents for many years, resulting in some resorting to other sources that are
not safe.
The city got a US$144 million from a Chinese bank in the
last few years to specifically fix the water supply situation, but accusations
of corruption in handling the funds emerged and ultimately nothing was
achieved. Herald
0 comments:
Post a Comment