BY MARGARET LUBINDA
BULAWAYO residents say the government is ill-advised on the water crisis after a Cabinet minister attributed the water shortage bedevilling the country’s second largest city to mismanagement.
Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs minister Ziyambi Ziyambi last week said there was no need to declare the water crisis a state of national disaster since it was caused by mismanagement.
Bulawayo City Council reported on Thursday that the city’s supply dams are at 29% capacity, intensifying calls for government intervention and external funding to address the crisis.
Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association chairperson Stephen Nkomo said poor maintenance and dam levels are two different things.
“That is not true, poor maintenance should be when there is water in the dams, there is totally no water, the pipes are not sucking anything and dams do not have water. So, we cannot say its mismanagement by the local authority. The minister should travel to the dams then they comment because poor maintenance and dam levels are two different things,” he said.
Political analyst Effie Ncube said government should reconsider the stance as adequate water for the city would boost the entire economy.
“Declaring a state of national disaster will help to release more resources and cut some of the red tape hindering the resolution of the perennial water crisis,” Ncube said.
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“Adequate water means more opportunities for investment in Bulawayo, something that will act as a boost to the entire economy. A prosperous Bulawayo is key to the country attaining a higher income status.”
Bulawayo mayor David Coltart said the city needed government intervention to resolve the situation, which will escalate if not resolved.
“We need the money that minister Ncube has promised, the US$14 million, to upgrade the pipelines from Insiza and Mtshabezi so that we can access the water; we need the government to deploy more police, it needs to be army to Nyamandlovu,” Coltart said.
He said the security measures would stop the vandalism and gold panning happening at the dams, adding that trenches dug by panners diverted water from the dams if the city received normal rains.
“We need to replace the stolen borehole pumps so that we can double the capacity, if you go down to the catchment area, you’ll see that the water is being compacted in every single catchment area; you will see how these gold panners have dug huge trenches across our rivers and literally the only way that we’ll get water into our dams is through a cyclone,” he said.
“Thirdly, we need the police, certainly the army and Environmental Management Agency to stop the rampant degradation of our catchment areas. The gold panners must be stopped overnight, if they are not, then this situation is going to continue.
“We need Cabinet approval for a new dam, Glassblock, which we’ve proved is desperately needed now, it will take two years to build, but once built, it will be a game changer; it will dramatically improve our water situation, but if it isn’t built, the current situations will just be perpetuated.”
Bulawayo Residents Charter chairperson Thamsanqa Ndlovu, said they were appealing for the issue to be approached from a neutral perspective.
“We discussed as residents and realised that we should avoid polarising the water issue, let us not dramatise it. We will look for a neutral platform through ward development committees where we will build neutrality because people are the ones suffering,” Ndlovu said.
He wants the government to separate the Bulawayo water crisis from the one prevailing in Harare.
“They should separate our crisis and the Harare one; ours has its own identity. How can the government prove mismanagement of its own power? We want simple things, they should not give reasons, a simple action to sit down with the council and be on the same page is ideal.”
