MAYOR Jacob Mafume has admitted that the City of Harare (CoH) is failing to provide adequate water supply to residents and ratepayers, a situation that has plunged many suburbs into a severe water crisis.
Mafume's admission comes at a time when residents of Harare are grappling with prolonged water shortages. Many areas experience days without a drop of clean water, worse off with this happening towards the festive season.
The city premier said government should help provide water to Harare on a day-to-day basis.
"There is still a significant shortage of supply in terms of what we need to supply on a day-to-day basis, and that had to be dealt with through a number of measures that require a whole of government approach.
"We have since approached central government and made a request in terms of the pumping capacity, the civil works that have been done at Morton Jaffray, and also give an update on what needs to be done once we do those, we would be able to at least get 500 mega litres per day. That will significantly alleviate the water shortages that we were currently facing," said Mafume.
Mafume also noted that the prolonged water supply cuts are being affected by the recent power surge that damaged water treatment equipment.
"We understand that there are suburbs that have not had water in the currents few days, after our shutdown, we had a power surge and the power surge created the situation where the water flowed back into the plants and the pumps that we used to pump the water, were water locked, or they were flooded.
"They are currently being dried by a specialist company that is doing the work, and one of the pumps will be finished within the next few 48 hours.
"We have already started pumping in certain suburbs, Glenview, Kuwadzana, and so forth, we will be pumping into the CBD, or we are already pumping the effects that will be felt as the day progresses," said Mafume
The mayor also acknowledged the environmental concerns at Lake Chivero being polluted and requires various stakeholders to fix the problem while stating that the water body is managed by Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) and the National Parks, while the CoH claims that they treat the lake's water each day.
"We are also concerned and working to deal with the issue of the pollution in Lake Chivero...it is a whole of government responsibility, we get our water from Lake Chivero but it is managed by ZINWA and also by National Parks.
"It requires all stakeholders to work together to maintain its environmentally friendly and to make it cleaner, it is in our interest to have Lake Chivero clean because it also reduces the chemicals we are using or in other words we get more water for the chemicals that we will be using, if the water is clean.
"We treat the water, and we can assure the residents that it is safer for them to drink Harare water to where we are supplying than to get water from unprotected sources and untreated water bodies especially at this time where we have infectious disease outbreaks which is very irresponsible for stakeholders, NGO's, government officials or anybody to move around trying to say that Harare water is not safe for consumption.
"If other people need to take extra precautions, they can. If you need to boil it, if you need to do anything, you do it," said Mafume.
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He, however, assured stakeholders that CoH is going to look into the causes of pollution at Lake Chivero.
With the festive season fast approaching, Mayor Mafume assured residents that it will provide enough water, as they are not going on holiday.
"The CoH doesn't go on Christmas holiday, we work 24/7 all year round, none of the directorates have gone on any holiday nor have we authorised any holidays.
"We are also going to make sure that we try to find any extra energy sources for our key points so that we deal with energy shortages as they occur from time to time but we want to assure, the citizens of Harare that we are here at work.
"We will not go for any Christmas breaking to make sure that they receive water and that it is safe for them to use, and that we increase the water supply to many suburbs as we possibly can," said Mafume.
