Municipality fined $19 000
THE Chitungwiza Municipality has been fined $19 000 by the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) for polluting water sources.
This was revealed in the municipality’s recent Health Report.
In an interview, Chitungwiza Town Clerk Dr George Makunde confirmed the development alleging that the pollution was as a result of vandalism of a transformer.
“In March, one of our transformers at our sewer plant in Zengeza was vandalised by people who wanted to drain oil and the transformer was reduced to ashes hence we could not treat waste water.
“In essence, it means that the sewage we were pumping to our Imbga Farm was not fully treated hence not fully fit to be disposed into river streams.”
The local authority was also fined for the current rehabilitation work they are conducting at one of their main sewer lines in St Mary’s.
“We are also doing the main sewer line that is in St Mary’s at Limbane but because it is an upgrade of an existing line, we then had to block sewage from going to the treatment plant. We were also fined for that,” said Dr Makunde.
Meanwhile, the municipality is in the process of identifying a new dumpsite as the existing one is now full.
“Our current dumpsite is no longer in good condition and we are yet to find a new one as it is something that is done in conjunction with EMA.
“We are still scouting around to get a better site for the solid waste management and we hope to have identified it before the end of the year,” said Dr Makunde.
According to the recent Health Report, it was also noted that there was need to find a landfill compactor to assist in managing the dumped waste as it was not being separated at the site.