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Water shortages hit Zimbabwe
01/08/2007 14:17 - (SA)
Harare - Taps in the Zimbabwean capital are running dry even though the city's main supply dams are more than 60% full, according to figures from the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA).
With more than half of Harare's three million inhabitants now experiencing water shortages, residents were resorting to desperate measures to find supplies.
Carrying a large bucket to work had become a daily task for Tedious Marembo, employed as a cleaner at a block of government offices in the city.
This building was never without water, because it housed three government ministries. So Marembo filled his bucket at work to provide water for his wife and two children who lived in Kuwadzana, a poor suburb in the south-west of Harare.
'Average civil servants earns Z$4m'
He said: "My wife has to walk a long distance to get water at a church in my neighbourhood, where a borehole was sunk, (and) she has to pay Z$50 000 for a bucket.
"The only way I can help her cope with household chores is to carry with me a 20-litre bucket to bring water from my work place."
At the official exchange rate, Z$50 000 was worth $200; at the black-market rate, however, it would only buy 36 US cents at the time of writing.
On average, civil servants earned Z$4m - a little over $22 a month, at unofficial rates.
Harare had experienced intermittent water shortages for about two years, due mainly to poor management and ageing infrastructure.
ZINWA management 'inadequate'
Water experts from a Scandinavian development agency who preferred to remain anonymous claimed ZINWA management was inadequate because the water authority was not run by professionals, but rather by political appointees hired by Water Resources and Infrastructural Development Minister Munacho Mutezo.
The experts believed the capital's water distribution system, built long before independence in 1980, had gone without proper maintenance for many years.
Critically important pumps that had an expected lifespan of between 15 and 20 years had not been replaced since they were installed.
Sanitation had gone the way of water provision, as members of the Mashapa household - also in Kuwadzana - could attest.
Olivia Mashapa, mother of the family, said: "We are locking children in the house. They can no longer play outside because of the danger of contracting diseases.
"Cholera is right in our midst; we have reported to ZINWA and they came, but as soon as they left the problem started again; we now don't even know what to do and who to tell."
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