Peter Tanyanyiwa
The Harare City Council (HCC) says the current erratic water supplies in the Capital will improve by the end of this week.
This came out earlier this week, soon after the HCC met with its major local chemicals supplies Zimpos, which had scaled down on the chemicals supplies due to the debt it is owed by the Municipality, in the process forcing the City to also scale down its water production.
Speaking after the meeting with Zimphos management, Harare Water Director Engineer Phakamile Moyo tabled the challenges they were facing but also announced the positive outcomes from the meeting where Zimphos agreed to increase their chemicals deliveries hence water supplies are expected to improve.
“In the past 10 days or so we were forced to scale down on our water production from an average of 320 mega litres to about 170 mega litres a day.
“After engagements with the chemicals supplier, they have promised to raise their chemicals deliveries from 2 to 4 loads a day hence by the end of this week residents can expect an improvement in the water supplies situation, however they should help the City by paying up their outstanding debts. Residents owe the City about $800 million dollars,” said Engineer Moyo.
Harare Municipality is currently unable to produce enough water to meet consumption demand because there is a shortage of water treatment chemicals caused largely by lack of capacity to retire a huge debt with Zimphos, the city’s biggest local supplier of liquid aluminum.
Zimphos is failing to meet the city demand citing cash flow problems.
The Harare Environment Management Committee (EMC) has also highlighted a number of challenges they are facing during this Covid-19 period in executing their service delivery duties.
In an interview on Wednesday the EMC chairperson Councillor Kudzai Kadzombe said their biggest challenge currently is the availability of diesel.
She also mentioned the shortage of resources in the roads division which had also just resumed works and the decline in rates being paid.
“We are facing diesel challenges which are crippling our service delivery, mainly the waste management, attention to water and sewer bursts.
“Also our roads department had just started works but in small batches because of the available resources,” she said.
“Our resources are very limited during this difficult period of Covid-19. The other major challenge we have been facing is the decline in rates being paid by residents, that income shortage has really affected council, and the EMC,” added Councillor Kadzombe.
The EMC chairperson added that in an effort to ease the diesel challenges they have now initiated discussions with their parent Ministry to try and find ways to bring diesel the country, as an exemption.