City of Mutare should act on water crisis

EDITOR — IT is with dismay that city fathers and management are not taking the erratic water supply gripping the beautiful City of Mutare seriously.

It is a very sad scenario to see residents waking up in the dead of the night to fetch water from valves, boreholes and unprotected sources like wells, yet we have an engineering department whose sole responsibility is to offer engineering services to the local authority.

Mutare City Council has perfected the art of giving flimsy excuses to situations they can easily deal with.

For starters, the city’s water uses gravity and there is no way they cannot evenly distribute the precious liquid to residential areas.

The information from Zinwa on dam levels in Manicaland shows that water levels are still very high in Mutare’s water sources, Pungwe River and Smallbridge Dam, yet residents are enduring the nightmare of not having running water from their taps.

In areas where the water is being distributed, there is a skewed distribution pattern. Only areas where council employees stay have constant and consistent supplies, and it pains to see them watering their gardens, yet their neighbours across the road would have last received supplies a long time.

A case in point is Area 3, 7, 14 and 15 of Dangamvura where some sections can go for weeks without water. If it is a crisis, it should affect everyone and not to have a few individuals benefiting because they work for the local authority.

Mutare City Council is grappling with the problem of defaulters and this uneven water distribution pattern is one of the contributing factors.

How do you expect residents to pay for services not rendered?

Supply us with water first and we will also play ball and pay up. We cannot continue being the Biblical Lazarus who fed on crumbs falling from the tables of those with links to those tasked with the duty of opening valves to supply residential areas.

As residents we also urge supervisors to be hands-on because some of the people are sleeping on duty.

Some of the council employees tasked with the duty of manning boreholes like the one in the T-section of Dangamvura have become bigheaded. It boggles the mind to see them prioritising watering their vegetables, yet desperate residents spend hours in queues to access water.

Please our Mayor and your management team fix this crisis before it degenerates into a mortal threat. Put your house in order because we cannot continue having a crisis like this which borders on inefficiency.

There should be no room for cry babies at the Civic Centre. We elected you into office to deliver.

Concerned Resident Dangamvura Area 7