ZINWA, Gwanda council disappoint residents

Statement from the Gwanda Residents Association on the planned demonstration about the on going water problems in the town:

For close to three years now, Gwanda Town continues to experience erratic water supplies from our water service providers.

Now and again the residents are exposed to long hours of stressful water cuts in the name of water rationing by our service providers. These water rationing episodes always come at a time when mother nature would have filled the dams that supply us with water to near capacity.

Every time these water cuts are being effected,as the Residents we get into gear seeking to find out where the problem is and what is being done to solve the problem. On all occasions our starting point is always our council which is the authority we pay our water fees to. Every time we approach them they give us the same old answer which now sounds like a scratched record that the problem is with ZINWA not them. When we go to ZINWA they tell us that the problem is with council not them.

These up and down the offices postings all but leave us looking like fools who do not know what they want. We continue being thrown from pillar to post while in that period we will be deprived of our constitutional right of. access to clean, safe and portable water. We in all those episodes remain like the Swahili grass that dies quietly when two elephants fight.

As residents we have now come to a. stage where we have to say enough is enough and indeed it is enough. This week's episode of water cuts has not. spared us of tragedies. A police officer drowned and died while taking a bath in the historically unsafe Mtshabezi River. Some women were lay held by a thug who raped them on their way to fetch potentially dangerous water from a disused mine shaft. At least six case of cholera have been reported at the hospital. The hospital maternity wing is at near stand still. Mothers are having to make the long trip to give birth in Bulawayo or Mtshabezi Mission because of some people's administrative issues.

It is so sad that in all this we remain faced by extremely unrepentant authorities who should be providing us with water but find their personal egos more important than the sufferings of our people.

In a bid to try and stop the madish pillar to post postings we have been exposed to by both ZINWA and Council, as Residents we invited these two bodies to a boardroom discussion on Friday the 14th of November to discuss this impasse. Shockingly so, both of them showed no commitment to attending us and so did not turn up for the meeting albeit with the emphasis we had made to them on the importance and urgency of the matter.

With no option left, the residents resolved that if the two parties are not prepared to meet us in the board room then we shall demand for them to meet us in the streets. We tried to give dialogue on this very important matter one more chance but still the authorities choose to ignore us. We view this as serious arrogance from the part of our service providers which we can only construe to be a means of testing our strength and patience.

The Residents Association has therefore adhered to the calls of the people to be allowed to exercise their Section 55 constitutional right to demand their Section 77 constitutional right.

Friday 14th November 2014 we submitted our notice to the Zimbabwe Republic Police PISI that residents of Gwanda will be holding a peaceful demonstration at the Municipal Park in the CBD. Being ignored, disrespected and belittled by the service providers we have invited our local Member of Parliament to come and listen to our problems and so hopefully get him to use his might to bring sanity between ZINWA and Council and stop them from depriving us of OUR water.

We are however, further disturbed as residents to get a notice from the police saying that they will not be sanctioning our demonstration which we believe is our constitutional right to do so more so on a matter of such magnitude. It is therefore by means of this statement that we advise the Police, ZINWA, Council and indeed the whole world that come monday morning the 17th of November 2014, sunshine or rain, we the residents of Gwanda whether in our tens, hundreds or thousands shall bravely hold a demonstration to demand an explanation and a solution to our water problems. We strongly believe that nobody should stop us from exercising our right to be attended to and be heard. We believe that nothing at this juncture should come up and stop us from exercising this our constitutional right to demand our rights. We want an end to this water problem once and for all.