Zinwa unbundling underway

The Ministry of Water, Environment and Climate has begun the process of unbundling the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa).

Water, Environment and Climate Minister Savior Kasukuwere told parliamentarians this afternoon that the restructuring process will see a separation, resulting in the establishment of a separate water regulator.

"We are now undertaking, with the support of the World Bank and the African Development Bank, a program to unbundle Zinwa to make it more efficient, to make it much more aligned to the ZimAsset in terms of what we want to see in terms of water delivery.

"This will require a lot of readjustments. We also want to set up the regulatory body, which will be separate from Zinwa because right now Zinwa is both the player and the referee," he said.

Minister Kasukuwere also said one of the key aims of restructuring Zinwa is to re-capacitate the body for the construction of dams. "We also want to bring back the capacity of building our own dams, and again Zinwa will lead in dam construction." Last month Minister Kasukuwere dissolved the Zinwa board after expressing displeasure with their response to flooding at Tokwe-Mukosi Dam.

Meanwhile, the Minister has said work on Tokwe-Mukorsi is now almost 85 percent complete and work would begin "in the next few weeks" on the second phase of the project, that is, the upstream side of the dam. The Tokwe-Mukosi dam is being constructed by Italian company Salini Impregilo with Zinwa as the project engineer.