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ZIMBABWE: No Water, Just a Bill

Ntandoyenkosi Ncube

HARARE, Aug 12 2009 (IPS) - City council turns off the water. National minister in charge says turn it back on. Domestic and commercial users alike dispute their unpaid bills. The shadow of a cholera epidemic looms over it all. Must be Harare.

“We are not going to pay. We will boycott paying.” Netsai Mutongi has a letter from the council demanding 230 dollars for unpaid water bills, just part of the 22 million dollars Harare City Council says it is owed in outstanding water bills.

But she says she’s not paying because she never even saw the water. “Our argument is that the amount of money being ordered by the City of Harare is inflated and we are paying for leaking water. The money (that the council is) demanding is not proportionate to the value and amount of water that is being supplied to us.”

The water crisis in Harare’s high density suburbs and satellite cities is getting worse. Harare requires 1,200 megalitres per day for domestic and industrial consumption; the Morton Jeffrey treatment plant has a maximum production capacity of 614 megalitres, and is actually pumping out between 400 and 500 megalitres per day.

Engineers say Harare is losing more than 40 percent of the water pumped out into the system due to pipe leakages.

“Pipes and equipment at the Morton Jeffrey are outlived; conveyor belts have since stopped working. We are losing hundreds of megalitres per day through incessant pipe leakages in our dilapidated infrastructure,” says water engineer Albert Nhongomhema.

Residents say they have been forced to share water with “donkeys and wild animals,” resorting to fetching water from open sources, possibly exposing themselves to water-borne diseases. Others buy water from neighbours with back yard wells.

“You can’t drill a borehole in high-density suburbs unless it is on church or school grounds. Churches usually sell or supply water to their members. We can only get water from those with illegal wells in their back yards,” Roslyn Matarutse told IPS. “A bucket of water costs two dollars U.S., sometimes three dollars.”

People note that boreholes have been drilled at the official residences of vice presidents, ministers and permanent secretaries and other senior government officials – and the president’s residence.

Residents in Harare’s humbler homes fear continued disconnections will result in disease. Water shortages last year contributed to a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe, that the World Health Organisation labelled the worst outbreak of the disease in Africa in 15 years. A hundred thousand people fell sick across the country; four thousand died.

The national minister for water resources and development, Sam Sipepa Nkomo, is concerned. “Water is life, because everything that we do revolves around water. If clean water is cut off, then it will force residents to look for alternative sources, which will obviously be dirty. Disconnecting water is like cutting off life,” Nkomo told IPS.

“The residents cannot be expected to pay for water which they did not receive or use. Instead of disconnecting water supplies to residents and commercial interests with genuine outstanding bills, the Harare authorities should negotiate easy payment methods; otherwise we will have another cholera disaster.”

According to Nkomo, government recently disbursed 17 million dollars for repairs to Harare’s dilapidated water and sewage infrastructure, but admitted that fully addressing the problems is beyond government’s capabilities at present.