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Zinwa was allocated $11 million by Government for the project.

In an interview, town secretary Dr Sipho Singo said the upgrading would help augment water supply in the border town.

The ongoing works at the Zinwa treatment plant would be complete before end of the year.

“Government has allocated Zinwa $11 million for the upgrading of the Beitbridge water treatment plant and we hope this will go a long way in addressing water problems in our town, particularly Dulibadzimu high density suburb. The project has already started and we hope it will be completed before the end of the year,” Dr Singo said.

Perennial water shortages coupled with constant sewer bursts continue to dog residents of the border town, a development that has largely been attributed to a continuous breakdown of the main pipeline coupled with Zinwa’s failure to pump adequate water to reservoirs.

Dr Singo said the treatment plant had a capacity to pump only 6 000 cubic metres of water per hour yet the town required at least 15 000 cubic metres per hour.

“Beitbridge’s current water and sewer infrastructure is failing to keep pace with the growth of the town resulting in water shortages and constant sewer spillages.

“The Zinwa water treatment plant can only pump a third of the required water supply for the town resulting in some sections of the town going for several weeks without water,” he said.

In an effort to augment water supply, the local authority, with the assistance of World Vision and Unicef, drilled 34 boreholes in strategic points around the border town.

The boreholes were sunk at the height of the cholera outbreak in 2008, which claimed scores of lives throughout the country. The outbreak was attributed to unhygienic water and sewer bursts.

Zinwa pumps water from the Limpopo River into two storage dams, but due to constant breakdown of its main pumping system and inadequate filters, the water utility relies on one dam, which feeds into the reservoirs.

Dr Singo said the local authority, in conjunction with Zinwa, was in the process of implementing a $2,65 million World Bank-funded Beitbridge emergency water supply and sanitation programme.

The project, which is being funded by the World Bank through the Government and the State Peace Building Trust Fund (SFP), is aimed at rehabilitating the border town’s obsolete water and sewer system.
Under the programme, which was launched in March, water supply would be restored from three megalitres per day to the town’s initial five megalitres.
The process also involves the replacement of raw water pumps, rehabilitation ofwater storage dams, the installation of booster pumps and the replacement of consumer and bulk water meters and the procurement of water quality testing equipment.

Beitbridge Town Council is the primary implementing agency while Zinwa is responsible for the rehabilitation of the water supply component of the project.