SW Radio Africa (London)
Henry Makiwa
9 October 2007
Bulawayo residents have spurned moves by the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) to draw the city's water supplies from the heavily polluted Khami dam.
The country's second largest city is in the throes of a seven month water crisis following the drying up of all but two of its main water reservoirs. To compound the situation, government and the Bulawayo city council are tussling for control of the city's water management, with the state-run authority, ZINWA, insisting it has the answer to the problems.
Bulawayo city elders have however, flatly rejected ZINWA's proposals to source water from Khami dam which they argue has been stockpiling raw sewerage "everyday for the past 19 years".
The dam, which has a capacity of only 3 420 000 cubic metres of water, was decommissioned in 1988 after the Southern Area Sewerage Treatment (SAST) began emptying raw sewerage into the dam.
Water engineering experts and city elders alike are against the ZINWA proposal to channel resources to the Khami water project because of the costs involved in setting up an infrastructure to purify the water to acceptable standards, given the dam's capacity and the amount of pollution it contains.
Wynas Dube of the Bulawayo United Residents Association warned that reconnecting water supplies to Khami dam would pose serious health hazards.
Dube said: "The people of Bulawayo refuse this proposal, I repeat, we refuse. Everyone knows Khami was decommissioned in 1988 and has been receiving raw sewerage everyday since then."
"ZINWA should instead expend its energy and resources on the Mtshabezi Project, and the rehabilitation of boreholes at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer. Mtshabezi Dam, for instance, would make more sense in terms of capacity as it can hold 3,5 million cubic metres of water," Dube explained.
Bulawayo is facing a critical shortage of water and is relying on only two major dams, Insiza and Inyankuni, following the decommissioning of other supply dams.
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