Gwanda water woes far from over

Besides numerous scuffles and interventions between the Municipality of Gwanda, residents and Zimbabwe National Water Authority ZINWA, the water woes in Gwanda still look far from being over.

In the last weeks the town has been running dry of water at least four days in a week as the ZINWA and Municipality of Gwanda fights resurface. The Municipality owes the national water regulatory body over $7 million dollars and continues to fight to recover the money from council by applying some water restriction measures to get council to pay.

The battle between council and ZINWA has been going on for close to four years now as the two bodies fail to agree on the actual amount owing between them and on a payment agreement.

To force council to pay, ZINWA started disconnecting water supplies to the town which led to council going to court and getting a court interdict stopping ZINWA from disconnecting water supplies. At one time the council had to seek Minister Obert Mpofu to bail them out after residents had gone for three weeks without water by offering a piece of prime land to raise $100 000 to pay ZINWA.

Late last year residents of the town ended up taking the matter into their own hands and decided to go on a demonstration which was quickly quashed by the police. The police also arrested senior ZINWA officials for infringing the court order stopping the water cut offs.

In the latest of the woes, the town has been going without water for about four days a week for the past five weeks. Sources within the council indicate that the water shortages have been a result of lack of chemicals to treat the water which ZINWA are demanding council to supply.

"ZINWA is demanding the chemicals from council because it claims it has no money to buy the chemicals as there is no money coming from council" said the source. On the other hand the cash strapped Municipality is failing to raise the money to buy the chemicals.

Interviewed in a snap survey residents of Gwanda expressed their anger at the never ending feud between council and ZINWA. The residents demanded for an immediate intervention of government to solve the Gwanda water problems.

"We are fed up of ZINWA and Council fighting when we don't have water in our houses. We demand government to intervene in this matter or we take it into our own hands and this time we will die in the streets from police beatings," said an angry Khumbulani Ndlovu a resident in the town.