Chitungwiza water privatisation stalls

GOVERNMENT has shot down plans by Chitungwiza Municipality to form a private company to manage its water saying that the move would be too costly for residents.

It was going to cost council over $5 million to establish the company.

Permanent secretary in the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing, Engineer George Mlilo said the idea was wrong.

Council wanted a partnership with Sesan (Pvt) Ltd in the deal and negotiations were at an advanced stage.

Government has since asked the local authority to redo its feasibility study.

Chitungwiza Municipality town clerk Mr George Makunde said council had done all the ground work.

“We applied for authority to commercialise water after having gone through all processes in terms of consultation with our residents,” said Mr Makunde.

“We got the authority to increase our water tariff from $0,39 per cubic metre at which we incurred a loss of $0,14 per cubic metre which we sold. We agreed with our community, and if you check our 2017 budget now has $0,89 per cubic metre as the cost for water, which meant we went commercial, not private as people want to interpret it,” said Mr Makunde.

“Water as a commodity needs to be run commercially in order for you to constantly and continuously delivered to the community. Having done that, we then realised that we are not a water authority in essence because we do not have our own water mass, which is a dam or a treatment plant.”

Mr Makunde said this left them with limited options.

“We then went ahead and applied to form a water company (Water Utility Company). The essence of that company was to make sure water supply and sanitation services would be run commercially under that private company, 100 percent owned by council,” he said.

“This was meant to run away from issues where people do not always want to be associated with investing in a public organisation. We managed to circumvent that and we got that authority to proceed and have a water company established,” he said.

“We were caught within the provisions of Joint Ventures Act. The Government said you cannot proceed and engage anybody else outside the Act, which then stalled progress.

“Government wants us to carry out a new feasibility study but our issue was who does not require water and why a feasibility (study)?”

Eng Mlilo said council must follow procedure.

“We are not objecting to the idea of Chitungwiza having their water plant as long as they have their own source. Currently it gets water from Harare, which is doing the treatment of water.

“However, Chitungwiza Municipality wanted to privatise the water, which we are not familiar with. We have never had water privatised. We asked them to re-look into their feasibility study since most local authorities should manage their own water,” he said.

Eng Mlilo insisted that Chitungwiza Municipality must manage its water instead of privatising it.

“They should come up with a water treatment arrangement instead of privatisation and convince us if they are ready.”