Council needs to plan ahead for water conservation

THE City of Bulawayo has always had water problems since time immemorial, with occasional breaks when the region experiences a good rainy season. The writing has always been on the wall that a water crisis was slowly but surely coming the very moment the country experienced poor rains last year, that not only affected Zimbabwe but the whole southern Africa region. But somehow, City Fathers expected some miracle to happen along the way and it never dawned on them that there was a need to preserve water well in advance so as to avoid the catastrophic situation that residents now find themselves in.

Signs were there since the beginning of the year that water in the city supply dams would not last the distance, and mechanisms should have been put in place months back to avoid a hard hitting response mechanism such as a 72-hour water shedding schedule per week, which has now turned out to be in fact four to five days a week in some suburbs without the precious liquid.

The cliché, failing to plan is planning to fail, rings true to the leadership at the MDC-T run Bulawayo City Council. Residents should have been bombarded with campaign material to conserve water for the better part of the year, with some measures put in place to make sure that people use less water, even cutting supplies for certain hours per day just to drive home the point, but alas, what residents were subjected to were daily dosages of corrupt activities by councillors and some senior executives bent on enriching themselves.

We appreciate the fact that no mortal soul is in charge of how and when rains will come, but at least, we expect City Fathers to plan ahead, based on facts on the ground emanating from the engineering department which should keep check on how much water is left and make estimates of how long the available water will last. We also note that the population in the city keeps growing, as evidenced by the number of new suburbs, yet there has been no corresponding growth in terms of water sources.

In times when water sources have run dry, water shedding becomes the logical thing to do, but we are against the council taking a somehow knee jerk response as if it does not have people employed 24 hours a day to make assessments in relation to service delivery. Bulawayo residents surely deserve better.

However, we note as well that Bulawayo is not the only city experiencing water problems, as most local authorities in the country are in a quandary because of the El Nino-induced drought. But we have not seen any attempts to make use of the little rains that come at times, as is the case in the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s time local authorities, including the Bulawayo City Council, consider initiatives like rain water harvesting to better the water situation. The harvesting of rainwater simply involves the collection of water from surfaces on which rain falls, and subsequently storing this water for later use. Normally water is collected from the roofs of buildings and stored in rainwater tanks.

This is practiced on a large scale in cities like Chennai, Bangalore and Delhi in India where rainwater harvesting is a part of the state policy. Elsewhere, countries like Germany, Japan, United States, and Singapore are also adopting rainwater harvesting. While this may seem an easy thing at face value, it is not being done extensively in the country and by capturing water directly, the country can reduce reliance on water storage dams.

The touted long term solution to the water woes of Bulawayo is the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project, but it is clear that funds are not available to make the project come to fruition, thus council, residents, Zimbabwe National Water Authority which is responsible for bulk water delivery in most parts of the country and even Government should sit down and come up with other feasible solutions.

And these engagements should not take place when the water crisis has struck, but well in advance to save people from the inconvenience of going for days without water, and risking catching diseases caused by lack of water.