Clean water supply solution to water-borne diseases

EDITOR — I would like to commend the Harare City Council for giving food vendors a 48-hour ultimatum to vacate the Central Business District.

I believe things have gone out of hand and intervention was overdue, it reflects the nature of the decision making process at Town House. They always wait for disaster to strike before they make efforts to rectify an anomaly.

Haphazard food vending has never been commendable, whether there is a typhoid scare or not.

However, while their efforts to curb the spread of typhoid are commendable, their sincerity is questionable considering the contaminated water they are pumping to residents.

For close to a decade, Harare water has not been safe to drink. This shows that the city fathers have not been making efforts to fix the problem.

Unless city water is safe to drink, water borne diseases will always be present.

They are aiming at the wrong post if they think that chasing vendors away is going to end these recurring health challenges. They need to make sure there is clean, safe to drink water first.

Also, the council should know that major cities have marketplaces in their business districts. All it takes is co-ordinated effort to ensure that the vendors have a reasonable place to sell their wares, where there is traffic.

The white elephant they created on the peripheries of the city will never be considered favourable by vendors whose businesses thrive on human traffic.

At the end of the day, the absence of food vendors will not have any effect in the fight against diseases if people drink contaminated water on a daily basis. Darryl Zivenge, Harare.