Clean City brings affordable, safe water to Mabvuku, Epworth, Chitungwiza

CLEAN City, a part of Cassava Smartech’s Vaya Technologies, has stepped up efforts provide safe drinking water by supplying affordable, clean water to Harare’s sprawling Mabvuku suburb as well as the dormitory towns Epworth and Chitungwiza.

These are areas that have experienced water shortages for the past decade due to rapid urban population growth and inadequate rehabilitation and maintenance of water and wastewater treatment plants, among other challenges, resulting in intermittent disease outbreaks such as cholera, typhoid and dysentery.

However, the Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe’s water and waste management unit Clean City, is changing all that by helping keep the communities’ environments clean and safe while transforming lives in meaningful ways.

Clean City chief executive officer Lovemore Nyatsine, said the provision of water and sanitation services was part of the group’s efforts in developing sustainable cities which offer good quality of life to various communities.

“Urban areas cannot be sustainable without ensuring reliable access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, as these have enormous consequences on human health and well-being, safety, the environment, economic growth and development,” he said.

“As such, we are doing our best to ensure that our cities and towns, which are the national engines for growth, have adequate water and sanitisation services.”

Nyatsine said the COVID-19 pandemic had made it essential for the group, whose motto is Doing well by doing good, to make available sufficient water points in Mabvuku and Epworth to prevent overcrowding and enable social distancing.

“Through Clean City’s bulk delivery water service, we have made sure that each family can access clean water by offering it in smaller affordable packages of 20-litre buckets which costs only $20” he said.

“Our water delivery trucks are available everyday in Mabvuku at Kamunhu shopping centre from 9am to 12 noon. There are also available at OK Tafara Shopping Centre from 1pm to 5pm everyday. In Epworth, they are found at Chiremba and Balancing Rocks from 9am to 12 noon and 1pm to 5pm, respectively.”

Reports say over two million people in Harare, Chitungwiza, Epworth, Ruwa and Norton, have minimum access to safe drinking water.

This has resulted in thousands of women and children spending eight to nine hours in queues at crowded boreholes or narrow water wells, to fetch water that may not be safe.

Over the last three decades, Zimbabwe has experienced a decline in access to clean and safe water. In 1988, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund reported that over 84% of Zimbabweans had access to safe drinking water.

From 2000 to 2017, the percentage of people with access to safe water and basic water services had decreased from 72% to 64% and basic sanitation decreased from 46% to 36%.

Nyatsine said Cassava Smartech was working with government authorities to ensure that Zimbabwe meets Sustainable Development Goal number six, which advocates for the provision of safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030 through investment infrastructure, availing sanitation facilities, and encouraging hygiene in communities.

He said through the company’s franchise business model that provides digital a platform and links firms that collect waste with private truck owners and customers, the group’s operations have opened employment opportunities to over 5 000 people, both directly and in downstream opportunities.