Residents vandalise sewer pipes
UNSCRUPULOUS Bulawayo residents are reportedly vandalising sewer pipes in the city and then use the diverted raw sewage to water illegal irrigations where they plant various items including bananas, spinach, maize, cabbage and onions which they later sell to unsuspecting consumers.
The move, which health experts have said has both long and short term effects to those that consume the produce, has seen the Bulawayo City Council raising a red flag, with the mayor, Councillor Martin Moyo saying they will soon adopt stringent measures to punish offenders.
The revelations came out during a tour of the city’s sewer maintenance sites by councillors and council officials last week.
Some of the illegal plantations are located in Emakhandeni, Njube, Cowdray Park and Luveve. Residents dig out a sewer pipe, cut it off then dig trenches to divert the now flowing raw sewer to their plantations which council officials say are green and fresh throughout the year.
“It is worrying that when these residents vandalise the sewer pipes for their own selfish reasons they pressurise the system upstream, this resulting in the high number of sewer bursts which we see around the city. Further, these people who vandalise the system are the very same people who later come accusing us of failing to address the bursts, yet the minute we fix the pipes they come the following day to vandalise them so that they water their plantations,” said the local authority’s operations technician for s ani t a t ion, Engineer Faith Nkonde.
She said constant efforts to conscientise the residents of the effects of vandalism were proving fruitless as they now considered the plantations as their own source of livelihood. “When there are sewer bursts residents are quick to blame council but what they don’t know is that at times they are the highest contributors to the bursts, for example when clearing these bursts we have come out with a lot of things ranging from dumped baby foetuses, dead dogs, clothing items, pampers, spoons and a whole lot of stuff which people dump in here,” said Eng Nkonde. Commenting on the revelations, Clr Moyo said they were now going to be tougher on these unscrupulous residents, calling on other residents to help identify the culprits so that they can be brought to book. “We have constantly called on Central Government to give councils arresting powers and help us establish municipal courts, this is one way we will be able to deal with such people because we know them but they are doing what they are doing because they know that we can never arrest or prosecute them. “Honestly, if someone can vandalise a whole sewer pipe so they can set up an illegal irrigation, it shows that someone is arrogant and there is a need for them to be dealt with as a matter of urgency as at the end of the day this is costing the local authority funds which could be otherwise used for other developmental projects,” said Clr Moyo.
Commenting on consuming food items that were watered using raw sewage, the local authority’s director of health services, Dr Edwin Sibanda said the food stuffs might cause diarrhoea in the short term but in the long term could also affect the children at school through stunted growth and poor performance.
“The effects of consuming these foods are two-fold where in the first we have bacteria which may get ingested through the food or water that came into contact with this raw sewage material which may result in them getting diarrhoea. The second level is that when someone who ate the food which came into contact with raw sewage passes stool with worms, the worms might be ingested by children who may be playing in the soil with these worms as a result those worms then hatch within the stomachs of these children and we all know that when they have these worms they end up having malnutrition, anaemia and generally lethargy and poor performance at school,” said Dr Sibanda.