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and users in and around the industrial sites through inadequate alternative routes.
Besides drying up several suburbs, the city is also losing 20 million litres of treated water a day, almost 6 percent of its total output but a far higher percentage of the water pum-ped east.
Despite being blamed for power problems at water centres, Zesa Hol-dings has distanced itself from problems affecting the city’s pumping capacity.
Earlier in the week, indications were that electricity problems at Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Plant were behind the drying of taps in several Harare suburbs.
Affected suburbs have gone for two weeks with little or no water.
After touring Morton Jaffray yesterday, city officials said there were multiple pipe bursts along Little Ma-rimba River.
City engineers are assessing the extent of the bursts before proffering solutions, meaning the problem could affect eastern and northern suburbs for at least a few more days.
Engineers have suggested isolati-ng the burst pipes and diverting water to the Letombo reservoir via a disused pipeline.
Harare Water director, Engineer Christopher Zvobgo, said the bursts were affecting Rugare, Sunningdale, the heavy industrial sites and big companies like Delta Beverages and Sugar Refineries.
Other affected areas include Msa-sa, Greendale, Chisipite, Glen Lorne, Mabvuku, Tafara, Manresa and Highlands.
“To repair the bursts we have to shutdown pumping at Warren Control and divert the water via another pipeline through Alex Park,” he said.
City spokesman Mr Leslie Gwindi said the pipes were over 20-years-old and needed to be replaced.
The bursts had resulted in Harare losing treated water worth US$16 000 daily using the industrial charge of 80 US cents per cubic metre. This means the city has lost between US$140 000 and US$210 000 in water in the past two weeks.
Zesa Holdings distanced itself from the water shortages saying it promptly attended to power supply problems.
“The Zimbabwe Electricity Transmission and Distribution Company . . . would like to inform its valued customers that the water crisis that is being faced in Harare is not being caused by inadequate power supplies at Morton Jaffray Water Works, as implied by the City of Harare.”
The power utility said since last December, the city had received electricity from a dedicated line in Norton.
The line tripped on February 24, but was “energised the same day”.
The following day the line tripped again due to vandalism and Zesa connected Morton Jaffray to an alternative feeder at Stamford substation, allowing the city to pump at 80 percent capacity.
“Currently, ZETDC has three feeders; namely Stamford that can enable the city to pump at 80 percent due to technical limitations of the feeder, Norton feeder and Parkridge both with capacities for them to pump water at 100 percent,” reads the statement.
The dedicated line was installed about a month ago at a cost of US$2,4 million.
Recently, Harare ran dry for a whole weekend after council disconnected supplies for maintenance work at Morton Jaffray.