Opinion / Columnist
Please stop disconnecting water in all cities of Zimbabwe! Water is a human right. Period!
17 Nov 2015 at 13:28hrs | Views
Please dear citizens, pass this message to all city councils in Zimbabwe. A country that has 90% unemployment, where do they get money to pay water rates from? Has it ever dawned on the whole Mayor of a Town where the residents will get money to pay water rates if they are unemployed! The city councils must be reminded that water is a human right and that human right should never to be tempered with. Please shout this all over the towns and cities and demand that right, it will never be given to you unless you demand it. Bulawayo City Council is disconnecting Gweru City Council is disconnecting! What nonsense.
All the civil servants working in these councils know what it means when they disconnect water charges. People will resort to drinking water from contaminate rivers and wells, it would appear it does not bother them as long as their families are getting clean water from the boreholes in their yards. They know too the diseases that the people will suffer from when they use untreated waters from wells and dams for domestic purposes. Please residents go out and tell them to be civil and human enough, we cannot sink so low as to have our children suffer from diarrhoea. We have sunk to rock bottom, what low are they then expecting still from the residents?
It is going to be the problem of women and children to source out water from far distant areas, rivers, boreholes, wells. Collecting water is not the work of the men but women and children. How are the residents going to manage toilets if they do not have running water in the homes? How are women going to improve hygiene in homes without reliable clean water in the homes? Are they sure it does not bother those councillors, basic hygiene in Zimbabwe homes? You stink me to high heavens!
After Murambatsvina of 2005 we know that there are many displaced people living in shanty homes where no running water, no toilets, they squat and squalor. About 4000 children in Zimbabwe die due to waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera. These are the waterborne diseases we know. Unknown to us are waterborne diseases such as Hepatitis, Arsenicosis (arsenic contaminated waters) Ringworms (Tinea) Typhoid, Paratyphoid Enteric fevers, Trachoma, (river blindness, Dengue & Dengue Haemorrhagic fevers. Due to gold panning activities in Zimbabwe there are cyan bacterial toxins in most rivers.
Is this revelation not scary enough for the councillors to get civil and human in their actions? Do they ever sit conferences and think about the consequences of shutting down clean water from the tapes of millions of people of Zimbabwe? Do the city councils civil servants and their employees of all Zimbabwe Towns and cities going to risk the lives of millions and they go ahead and disconnect the water services and exposing them to faecal contaminated waters? If this action of disconnecting water in some cities is not satanic then it is downright diabolic. (Subtract satanic and diabolic)There is no word to describe this action, to deny their on their citizens of clean water and sanitation, a nation already that have been reduced to dire poverty not known in the history of all societies in Southern Rhodesia.
Both the government and the council staff are just off-track and insensitive towards the citizens of this great country. That very money they are collecting will be looted; little of it will go towards the treatment of water. Can you be civil and human and stop this nonsense!
Dear citizens wake up and smell the coffee, these counsellors are self-serving and they do not have the needs of the people in their hearts. In civilised countries, the people are depended on the government to effectively provide sustainable treated water services during such emergencies for free. Clean water and sanitation is a right of all citizens and not a few elite.
Please spread this word and take action! Enough is enough!
All the civil servants working in these councils know what it means when they disconnect water charges. People will resort to drinking water from contaminate rivers and wells, it would appear it does not bother them as long as their families are getting clean water from the boreholes in their yards. They know too the diseases that the people will suffer from when they use untreated waters from wells and dams for domestic purposes. Please residents go out and tell them to be civil and human enough, we cannot sink so low as to have our children suffer from diarrhoea. We have sunk to rock bottom, what low are they then expecting still from the residents?
It is going to be the problem of women and children to source out water from far distant areas, rivers, boreholes, wells. Collecting water is not the work of the men but women and children. How are the residents going to manage toilets if they do not have running water in the homes? How are women going to improve hygiene in homes without reliable clean water in the homes? Are they sure it does not bother those councillors, basic hygiene in Zimbabwe homes? You stink me to high heavens!
After Murambatsvina of 2005 we know that there are many displaced people living in shanty homes where no running water, no toilets, they squat and squalor. About 4000 children in Zimbabwe die due to waterborne diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera. These are the waterborne diseases we know. Unknown to us are waterborne diseases such as Hepatitis, Arsenicosis (arsenic contaminated waters) Ringworms (Tinea) Typhoid, Paratyphoid Enteric fevers, Trachoma, (river blindness, Dengue & Dengue Haemorrhagic fevers. Due to gold panning activities in Zimbabwe there are cyan bacterial toxins in most rivers.
Is this revelation not scary enough for the councillors to get civil and human in their actions? Do they ever sit conferences and think about the consequences of shutting down clean water from the tapes of millions of people of Zimbabwe? Do the city councils civil servants and their employees of all Zimbabwe Towns and cities going to risk the lives of millions and they go ahead and disconnect the water services and exposing them to faecal contaminated waters? If this action of disconnecting water in some cities is not satanic then it is downright diabolic. (Subtract satanic and diabolic)There is no word to describe this action, to deny their on their citizens of clean water and sanitation, a nation already that have been reduced to dire poverty not known in the history of all societies in Southern Rhodesia.
Both the government and the council staff are just off-track and insensitive towards the citizens of this great country. That very money they are collecting will be looted; little of it will go towards the treatment of water. Can you be civil and human and stop this nonsense!
Dear citizens wake up and smell the coffee, these counsellors are self-serving and they do not have the needs of the people in their hearts. In civilised countries, the people are depended on the government to effectively provide sustainable treated water services during such emergencies for free. Clean water and sanitation is a right of all citizens and not a few elite.
Please spread this word and take action! Enough is enough!
Source - Nomazulu Thata
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