Gweru requires $43m for infrastructure rehab

GWERU City Council says it requires about $43 million to rehabilitate infrastructure at the city’s waste water treatment plants.

Addressing a benchmark meeting held recently, Gweru City engineering director Robson Manatsa said council required about $43 million to rehabilitate infrastructure at the city’s waste water treatment plants whereby the Cambridgeshire plant requires $15 million while Outflow works requires $28 million.

“We need to rehabilitate our waste treatment plants. To have a Cambridgeshire plant, which service Mkoba areas requires $15 million to rehabilitate and meet the demands whilst outflow works which services the Central business district requires $28 million, which gives us a total of about $43 million budget for rehabilitation,” said Eng Manatsa.

He said the work involves rehabilitation of ponds, trickling filters and procurement of new pumps for the plant station to increase the pump capacity.

He said the current combined pump capacity is about 18 mega litres per day while they receive about 32 mega-litres hence they need to expand so that they can be able to treat all sewage waste.

“The exact work, which needs to be done involves rehabilitating ponds, trickling filters and to procure new pumps. We need to increase our pumping capacity since the current combined pump capacity is about 18 mega litres per day while we receive about 32 mega-litres hence we need to expand so that they can be able to treat all sewage waste,” he added.

He added that the rehabilitation of ponds has already started and they aim to start on other areas as soon as possible since most of the equipment has broken down due to corrosion and aging.

“Most of the equipment have broken down due to age and corrosion and our aim is to rehabilitate them as soon as possible.

“We have already started rehabilitating the ponds at the waste water treatment plants,” said Eng Manatsa.