Investors set to fund Bulawayo water project

BULAWAYO has found investors to fund a project that is set to increase the pumping of water at Nyamandlovu Aquifer from 5 000 to about 30 000 cubic metres a day,  a Cabinet Minister said yesterday.
Addressing stakeholders and donors at the council chambers, the Minister of Water Resources Development and Management, Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, said the gravity of the water situation in the city had compelled him to brief Acting President Joice Mujuru. However, after the meeting, he still maintained that the Bulawayo water situation did not qualify the city to be declared a critical water shortage area.
Minister Nkomo said he would raise the Bulawayo water shortage issue in Cabinet on Tuesday.
He said AusAid, GIZ and World Vision were among the donors who had offered to fund water projects and save the city.
"I held a meeting with donors who have been helping us fund sanitary projects since the cholera outbreak in 2008. We have come here to find the cost of emergency solutions so that more water is availed to the city," said Minister Nkomo.
He said his Ministry had considered the duplication of Insiza Dam pipeline but had realised the project could not be completed in time to save the city.
"We then looked at Nyamandlovu Aquifer, where we are extracting 3 000 to 5 000 cubic metres per day. We realised we can go up to 30 000 cubic metres. At the moment we are pumping from 17 boreholes out of 55. We need the city's engineers to go on the ground and establish by Monday how much is needed to construct an extra reservoir either at Nyamandlovu or Cowdray Park where the water is pumped to before distribution," said Minister Nkomo.
He said council needed to reach an agreement with Zesa to stop load-shedding at Cowdray Park so that water could be pumped 24 hours a day from the aquifer.
Minister Nkomo said if the situation continued to deteriorate, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) would be forced to drill boreholes at Epping Forest, although the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) was against the move which it says will destroy delicate eco-systems.
"We will have to drink with the animals. It would not do for people to die while animals survive," he said, defending the decision after the meeting.The Minister said the donors had agreed to fund the motorisation of the 252 boreholes in the city that used bush pumps.
"Of the 355 boreholes in Bulawayo, 281 are functional but only 100 are motorised.  Of these, 265 have been tested and 249 have been found to contain safe water," said Minister Nkomo.
He said progress at Mtshabezi Dam was satisfactory adding that pumping was expected in two weeks time. Minister Nkomo said a generator will be used to provide power until electricity was connected.
The Minister, stakeholders and donors later toured the Aquifer and Mtshabezi Dam.
In an interview after the meeting, Bulawayo's director of engineering services Engineer Simela Dube said the aquifer project was likely to reduce water shedding from the present 72 hours to 48.
In a bid to stretch supplies to the next rainy season, Bulawayo introduced a 48-hour weekly water shedding schedule for all suburbs on 27 July.
On Monday the hours were increased to 72 hours a week as supplies in the dams continued to dwindle.
Two of the five supply dams - Upper Ncema and Umzingwane â€" have been decommissioned.
Lower Ncema and Inyankuni are likely to follow before the end of the year leaving Insiza Dam as the city's only supply  dam.
The Mtshabezi-Umzingwane pipeline that is largely viewed as the short term solution to Bulawayo's water problems has missed so many completion deadlines.
The permanent solution to the city's water shortage problem is the National Matabeleland Zambezi Water project, which has been on the drawing board for 100 years.
Minister Nkomo last month assured the region that the project would be completed in three years, following the securing of funding from China.