Harare braces for three-month water shortage

Harare residents should brace for serious water shortages for the next three months as the council is having challenges accessing water treatment chemicals as its major supplier is refurbishing its factory.

Acting Harare town clerk Engineer Mabhena Moyo said the city was in short supply of the essential chlorine which is imported from neighbouring South Africa.

"Our suppliers are having problems with their plant which they are refurbishing so they have cut down their supplies to us while they do the refurbishments.

"Our supplies have been cut by two thirds," he said.

Eng Moyo said in the meantime, the city was going to replace chlorine with HTH since they have local suppliers who could provide it.

He, however said the use of HTH dosing was labour intensive but that was the readily available substitute at the moment.

The city, which has been pumping an average of around 300 megalitres a day will likely see that capacity highly decreasing leading to dry taps or water shedding at best.

Updating residents through social media platforms, on the impending shortage of chlorine gas, acting water production manager Eng Addmore Chawasemerwa said the water problem was already out of hand.

Eng Chawasemerwa said the city was also limping on payments and the present low deliveries pointed to an impending disaster in terms of water supply.

"As of Sunday, we only received four cylinders against a delivery of 16 cylinders that we were expecting so the problem is actually upon us already," he said.

Eng Chawasemerwa said while they are switching to the use of HTH as an alternative, it posed its own problems in terms of dosage. He said because of the complex nature of using HTH, the city would have to reduce the production capacity.