Vandalism compounds Bulawayo water woes

Mkhululi Ncube and Suku Dube-Matutu, Chronicle Reporters

THE spate of vandalism and theft of water infrastructure at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer is crippling efforts to resolve the water shortages in Bulawayo amid calls for the Government to deploy its security services to safeguard the critical infrastructure and ensure adequate service delivery.

While the completion of the Lake Gwayi-Shangani is expected to bring a lasting solution to Bulawayo’s water woes, the Government has been pumping resources to rehabilitate boreholes at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer to augment bulk water supplies from dams, which continue to receive inadequate inflows due to adverse climate change effects.

In 2020, the Treasury released $205 million through the Zimbabwe National Water Authority to rehabilitate 10 boreholes, which increased the city’s daily borehole water drawdown to about 20 megalitres. 

Today, most of this infrastructure has been vandalised and the Bulawayo City Council is only able to pump between nine to 10 megalitres or as little as three megalitres in some days.

The need to beef up security at the Nyamandlovu Aquifer is a serious matter, Bulawayo Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister, Cde Judith Ncube, said yesterday, as she expressed concern over the crippling water shedding programme adopted by the council to conserve water. 

Bulawayo residents continue to endure prolonged water cuts, sometimes more than a week in some suburbs, at a time when some parts of the country are experiencing an outbreak of cholera and diarrhoea.

In an interview on the sidelines of the Bulawayo Provincial Capacity Strengthening and Strategic Plan Review Meeting, Minister Ncube said resolving water challenges facing the city was one of the top issues on the agenda. 

“We have made the recommendation to have our security services guarding the water infrastructure because we cannot sit back and do nothing. We were able to put that Epping Forest Project infrastructure after a crisis, which saw us losing lives in Luveve,” she said.

“We have the water crisis in the city and we have discussed this with the Joint Operations Command (JOC) and we have made a recommendation that our departments and private entities should put their heads together and be assisted by our security experts on how best we can do it. “We are prepared to get some advice that is the reason we have some private people here who can make contributions because the plans should not be owned by us, but by the people of Bulawayo.” 

Minister Ncube said it was disheartening that President Mnangagwa was at the forefront of pushing for the rehabilitation of the boreholes, which he later commissioned at the Epping Forest in Nyamandlovu but now the gains of this project are being reversed by vandalism. 

The President later commissioned the pipeline project, which will connect Bulawayo with Lake Gwayi Shangani to bring water once the project is complete.

“We were able to get 20 mega Litres, which went a long way but due to vandalism sometimes the town clerk says we get three –five mega litres, which is not enough,” said the minister.

“Vandalism is so terrible because it destroys the infrastructure that has been put in place. We need to put our heads together as Bulawayo and come up with a way of protecting our property. We need a sense of ownership instilled in the people.”

Like water infrastructure, the criminals have also been targeting electricity infrastructure, which also affects the effective pumping of water to the city. 

Meanwhile, Minister Ncube said this week’s strategic review meeting was critical as it allows key stakeholders in the province to assess, analyse, and evaluate progress made and map the way forward for the coming year in line with the National Development Strategy (NDS1) targets.

Matabeleland South is also holding its strategic planning meeting, which began on Monday. Provincial Affairs and Devolution Minister, Dr Evelyn Ndlovu, who addressed provincial stakeholders yesterday, said they were focused on scaling up the momentum towards the attainment of Vision 2030.

The province is in the process of reviewing its five-year strategic plan that was crafted last year in a bid to ensure enhanced service delivery at the community level.

“We are gathered once again as technocrats from Matabeleland South province to review the provincial strategic plan, which is our roadmap leading to the accomplishment of Vision 2030,” she said. 

“This strategic plan has to guide us in improving our service delivery in each ministry and sector. Each ministry has to fulfill its mandate. It was recently brought to my attention that there is a huge gap in our health service delivery. 

“I hear that hospitals in the province don’t have the necessary equipment and medication. I will visit all hospitals in the province to assess the situation and from there see how best it can be tackled. Our people must access improved health care services as this is part of attaining Vision 2030,” said Dr Ndlovu.

She said the strategic plan was instrumental in the attainment of a prosperous and upper-middle-income society and urged all stakeholders to embrace President Mnangagwa’s transformative vision.

“Let’s together for the betterment of our province. Let’s exercise the spirit of transformation, let’s strive to exercise our best capabilities in improving the economic growth of our province,” said Dr Ndlovu. 

“We were entrusted with the task of developing our province and let’s deliver. From here let’s implement the strategic plans and let our activities be informed by it. We have to work as a unit.”

Key strategic areas that had been identified include improvement of road infrastructure development, water, sanitation and hygiene, water infrastructure development, comprehensive health infrastructure, diversified agriculture productivity, environmental management and protection of all natural resources, youth development, child protection, education, enhanced diversified agriculture productivity, gender mainstreaming dissemination and research while applying competent scientific and technological advancements. 

“The province is endowed with natural resources and we want to see how best to tap into these resources to develop the economy. 

“All these resources should generate a lot of income to improve livelihoods. We have huge investment opportunities that we need to tap into,” said Permanent Secretary for Matabeleland South Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Mrs Lathiso Dlamini-Maseko.