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Pamela Shumba, Senior Reporter

THE Bulawayo City Council continues to face critical challenges in the supply of water despite its decision to suspend the water shedding programme. 

Addressing stakeholders during a water crisis meeting last Thursday, acting Town Clerk Mrs Sikhangele Zhou said power cuts and shortage of fuel were some of the challenges that were affecting not only water supply but other critical services.

The crisis meeting was held to explain these challenges and map the way forward after the city council announced that it had suspended the 48-hour water shedding programme that was introduced in February and would be reviewed on Friday next week.

“I know that some woke up to dry taps after the announcement of the suspension of the water shedding programme. I want to assure you that we’ve indeed lifted the water shedding programme but we continue to experience operational challenges that make it difficult for us to pump water to our consumers.

“We want to create an understanding between us and the stakeholders on what is happening. We know there are a lot of questions on whether we have enough water to take us until the rainy season and we want to update each other so that we all understand what is happening especially when we wake up with no water again,” said Mrs Zhou. 

She said last Wednesday night, there was a power surge which resulted in the breakdown of some pumps, which had to be fixed immediately but there was no fuel for the engineers to go and attend to the breakdown. 

“We had to run around looking for fuel while affected residents waited to have water again. The fuel challenges have also seen us failing to collect refuse for two days while our ambulances were also grounded,” said Mrs Zhou. She said the city council also had future planned works that may necessitate cutting water supplies and it was important for stakeholders to know and be prepared.

The council, she said, was also resuscitating the water crisis committees, which include the resource mobilisation, monitoring, consumption and supply as part of its                                                               efforts to involve stakeholders in improving the situation.

Director of engineering services Engineer Simela Dube emphasised the need for water conservation, saying evaporation was reducing dam levels.

“What is critical to us is balancing water consumption. Let’s consume within the limits that the system can give so that there’s no water shedding.

“There are two competitors in the dam. The sun and the people. Normally we abstract an average of 9 million cubic metres per month, which is the overall drawdown from the dam and what we pump to the city is an average of 3 million, meaning 6 million goes to evaporation, which is however necessary for the rains to come,” said Eng Dube.

He said it was not good for the council to cut water supplies as it damages infrastructure and causes pipe bursts.—@pamelashumba1