Zesa blamed for Byo water cuts
BULAWAYO City Council (BCC) has blamed the on-going water cuts in the city to power outages, and warned residents to brace for more interruptions.
In a notice to residents on Wednesday, town clerk Christopher Dube said the power cuts would affect the city’s ability to pump water to residents.
“The City of Bulawayo would like to advise members of the public that the city’s water facilities are currently experiencing power outages that have been affecting abstraction, pumping, treatment and storage of both treated and raw water over the past six days.
“This has had a negative overall effect on the city’s capacity to ensure continuous, and in some instances scheduled water supplies to all areas,” Dube said.
“These power supply interruptions have been as follows, Umzingwane and Inyankuni Dam abstract pump stations (33 hours), Ncema Water works and Fernhill Booster Station, treatment and major pump station (33 hours) and Nyamandlovu Rochester Pump Station, Cowdray Park Booster Station and Nyamandlovu (Aquifer 264 hours).”
“ln cases when the city reservoirs deplete to critical levels, supply to affected suburbs will be turned off until such a time where power supply to the mentioned plants has been restored to levels that will enable constant and consistent abstraction, treatment and pumping plus the raising of supply reservoirs to stable and satisfactory levels,” he said.
Bulawayo relies on five sources in the Umzingwane catchment area.
The city has been experiencing water rationing for years mainly because of prolonged droughts.