BULAWAYO — It is déja vu for the residents of the country’s second largest city, as council is set to roll out a tight water rationing programme, starting next month, that will see residents going for days without the precious liquid.
Should the heavens not open up anytime soon, the city fathers have warned residents to brace themselves for 72 straight hours without a drop of water coming out of their taps.
The last time council ran a similar strict water rationing regime was in 2012 when residents had to endure between three to four days without water.
According to latest council minutes, the city’s six supply dams were an average 34 percent full as at August 24, 2016.
A breakdown of the figures shows that Mtshabezi Dam was 59,89 percent, Insiza 50,87 percent, Lower Ncema 38,98 percent, Inyankuni 14 percent, Umzingwane 5,69 percent and Upper Ncema 1,48 percent full.
“It is evident that the available water in the dams needs to be conserved and one of the strategies is rationing. For a start, a 24-hour regime is recommended,” partly reads the council minutes.
Bulawayo mayor, Martin Moyo, said the water shortages were a “serious predicament” for the city with over one-million people.
“The only way the city can be spared from rationing is if we receive substantial rains in the interim…,” Moyo said.
Only the city’s central business district and industrial areas will be exempt from the water cuts to be rolled out across both eastern and western suburbs. The only day when water would be available to all the city residents will be on Sunday.
Indications are that the country is expecting normal rainfall after a severe drought last year ravaged livestock, decimated crops and left 4,1 million people hungry.
Light rains were experienced earlier this month, with the Meteorological Department warning farmers to prepare for an early farming season this year.
Bulawayo’s water woes date back many years ago.
City fathers believe that a permanent solution to Bulawayo’s water problems lies in drawing water from the Zambezi River, located nearly 450 kilometres north-west of the city.
The idea, first mooted by the colonial government in 1901, led to the formation of the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project (MZWP) in 1912, but has remained a pipedream.
The MZWP envisions drawing water from the Zambezi River through an underground water pipeline to Bulawayo.
The first phase of the massive project commenced in September 2004 with the construction of the Gwayi-Shangani Dam, which would act as reservoir along the pipeline’s route to Bulawayo.
It is estimated that the MZWP would cost more than US$600 million. However, with cash hard to come by for the Zimbabwe government, it is unlikely that the MZWP would come to fruition anytime soon.
In the interim, the city has sought relief from its precarious water woes by drawing supplies from Mtshabezi Dam through the Mtshabezi pipeline built by a Chinese construction company in 2012. Additional water is drawn from the Mtshabezi Dam, a reservoir on the Mtshabezi River, southeast of Bulawayo.
But only a fraction of Mtshabezi’s supply potential is being harnessed because recurrent power cuts have affected the pumping of water into the city’s water reticulation system.
Figures from the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) on the state of the country’s dams point to a dire situation unfolding across the country.
According to recent figures released by ZINWA, supply dams for Bulawayo, Gweru, Masvingo and Beitbridge were below 30 percent by August.
Whitewaters and Gwenoro, which supply water to Gweru, are now at 47,6 and 41,7 percent respectively, down from about 57 percent four months ago.
In Kwekwe, Sebakwe and Lower Zibagwe dams, which also supply Redcliff town, are at 57 percent capacity, down from 65 percent in March this year.
The figures also show that in Masvingo, Lake Mutirikwi, the biggest inland water reservoir in the country, is now at 13,5 percent capacity, its lowest in over a decade.
ZINWA officials have urged water users across the country to sparingly use the precious resource.
Tsungirirai Shoriwa, ZINWA’s corporate communications officer said the parastatal had just completed an updated tally of the country’s water levels at its major dams.
“The new statistics were completed last week and I need to check when the information will now be readily available to the public,” Shoriwa said.
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