News / Regional
Gwanda Residents Association statement on the failed water demonstration 7 October 2015
07 Oct 2015 at 19:43hrs | Views
The Gwanda Residents Association has been inundated with enquiries from angry residents and the media on why the much anticipated residents' demonstration against the water issues in the town was called off. It is with a heavy heart and equal disappointment that the Gwanda Residents Association seeks by means of this statement to explain the circumstances around the failed demonstration.
1) Background:
The background to the Gwanda water crisis is on four basic issues which are what the residents' grievances leading to a demand for a demonstration bordered on.
i. DUAL ADMINISTRATION OF WATER SUPPLY
The water administration in Gwanda is still the only one in all urban centers in the country under a dual administration system where ZINWA (the Zimbabwe National Water Authority) purifies water and sells it to Council before it is eventually sold to residents. This dual administration of water has led to a situation where we have two bulls fighting for the control of one center and in the end it is us the residents who suffer the consequences of the fight.
As things stand right now Council owes ZINWA an amount of $8.6 Million which ZINWA is demanding from Council and there by continuously rationing water in order to force for payment from Council. Under normal circumstances, Gwanda needs water to be pumped for 24 hours in order for all areas to get water. During the ZINWA rationing water is pumped for as low as 4 hours a day which leaves the town nearly without water at all. In the recent days residents have had to endure up to as long as 7 days without a drop of water coming from the taps in 95% areas of the town.
In follow ups on where and what the problem between Council and ZINWA is, Council has put the blame on ZINWA and repeatedly told residents that the solution to the problem is to have ZINWA out of the water administration system in the town. In several public meetings with residents Council has openly expressed their failure to get ZINWA out of the system and called on residents to join Council in getting rid of ZINWA.
On the other hand ZINWA puts blame on Council claiming that Council does not have the financial and technical ability to run the water treatment plant as yet and in any case before the plant is handed over to Council serious commitment needs to be given by Council on how the $8 million debt will be sorted out a commitment which is said to be lacking from council.
As a result of this the residents then decided to go on the demonstration sending a message demanding for the immediate removal of ZINWA from the water supply network in Gwanda.
ii. COUNCIL WATER DEPARTMENT ISSUES
Over a very long time residents of Gwanda have been up in arms with the Council's water department from the billing of water to the operations and maintenance of the water infrastructure.
The residents have been receiving outrageous bills from council and in other cases no bills being received at all. In several cases residents have had to go and query the bills with council and in most cases Council has reversed the transactions, which leaves a huge doubt on the Council's billing system. It is shocking to residents that on average an average Gwanda family of four is billed about 25 cubic meters of water which is 25 000 litres of water per month something which residents view as extremely impossible. Council also uses two Meter Readers for all the meters in the town. On several occasions it has be proven to council that the Meter Readers are not reading the meters and that its highly impossible that two people can read all the meters in the town every month.
The residents are also not happy with the way Council doesn't seem to give water supply a priority in their operations. Water infrastructure is left leaking for long periods with a point of reference being the main water supply pipe which was left leaking for close to three years with nothing done to it and millions of cubic meters of clean water lost. This none prioritization of water is also seen in the way council receives its revenue. When a person goes to pay an amount to Council the allocation of the payment gives water the least allocation which we take to be deliberately done so that Council avoids paying ZINWA for water in order to direct funds to its other none essentials like Travelling and Subsistence vote which is always ballooning.
The residents therefore sort by means of the demonstration to send a clear message to council that the water department at council needed to be sorted out. In several meetings between residents and Council, residents have called on Council to separate the water bills from other Council bills so that when a resident pays for water the payment for water is handled on its own on a separate account which council has failed or refused to implement.
iii. WATER DEBTORS TO COUNCIL
At almost every opportunity that Council gets to explain their service delivery failures particularly on water, they always give an excuse that they are failing to deliver because residents are not paying their bills to Council. As residents we find this as a very lame excuse from Council not warranting to be called a reason for their failures.
Facts which we have gathered as residents are that Government Departments, Parastatals and the Commercial Sector owe Councils millions of dollars. We can prove it beyond any measure of doubt that contrary to what Council says, the ordinary residents of Gwanda are doing their utmost best albeit under the harsh economic environment to settle their bills more so the water bills. It is a fact that Council is always spanner ready to cutoff water supplies to any resident who defaults in their water payments and so can never be true that the residents owe Council so much of the $8 million due to ZINWA.
As at June 2013 when Government slashed all the residents bills owing to Councils, Municipality of Gwanda was owing ZINWA $7.8 million dollars and ZINWA as per directive slashed all the water amount that was slashed off the Council bills by Government and this amounted to $3.2 million leaving government departments and the commercial sector whose bills were not slashed owing the remaining $4.6 million dollars. This revelation by ZINWA came as a shock to us residents as we were always lied to by our Council claiming that they can't settle the ZINWA bill because they had their bills slashed while the same was not extended to ZINWA.
In a recent meeting, when residents sort to know from the Mayor and Council how much in real figures Government Departments and Parastatals owed Council the Mayor indicated that these owed Council a mere $600 000 a figure which the residents heavily disputes as it is deliberately designed to inflict a sense of not being responsible on the part of the residents. If indeed these departments owed Council $600 000 by September 2015 from $4.2 million in June 2013 why is Council still owing ZINWA $8.2 million? Where was the $4 million dollars paid by government departments in the last three years used and why was it not paid to ZINWA?
Secondly, if out of the $8.6 million owing to ZINWA residents who owed zero to Council by June 2013 now owe Council $8 million dollars how much is Council charging residents for water? Fact is that ZINWA is billing Council an average $150 000 per month which means that in the 26 months to September 2015 $3 900 000 was billed to Council by ZINWA which clearly shows that nothing was paid to Council by Government Departments and proves a point that the residents were lied to by council on who really is crippling Council.
Over and above this, the ZINWA debt accumulates and interest of an average $50 000 per month which means that throughout the years that Council has been failing to pay the minimum $50 000 per month requirement by ZINWA not only was the principal amount not being serviced but the interest itself.
Residents therefore took decided to go out and send a message demanding for Government to settle its debts with Council in order for council to be able to deliver services.
iv. PREPAID WATER METERS
Residents of Gwanda were shocked by media reports last week that the Minister of Local Government had visited Gwanda and was told by our Council that we the residents of Gwanda had unanimously demanded that Council installs prepaid water meters to all the houses in Gwanda. This according to media was said to be the best way that Council was going to raise funds in order to settle the ZINWA debt and have ZINWA relinquish the treatment plant to Council.
This extremely misplaced statement by our Council to the Minister not only angers us as residents of Gwanda but makes a huge fool of us as the people of Gwanda in that whereas the whole of Zimbabwe and the region are fighting against the idea of prepaid meters we appear to be the only ones lobbying for the meters to be installed in our houses. We have by means of correspondence, petitions, statements and open meetings made it clear to our Council and all concerned that as residents of Gwanda we are totally against the unilateral installation of prepaid water meters. We have given all the reasons that the world over gives against the enforced use of prepaid meters and further scaled the matter down to our own locality to say that the economic conditions in our town and the high unemployment rate in the town will not be conducive for prepaid water in Gwanda.
The majority of the people in Gwanda are into informal sector businesses and gold panning things which do not provide a regular income for people to always have ready money to pay for prepaid water which they can pay post use as and when the funds become available. We have also indicated that there are no readily available alternative water sources within the town from which those who may not have ready money at a particular moment can access their constitutionally inscribed right to safe, clean and potable water.
Our Council has repeatedly told residents that when they install the prepaid water meters they will give each person 2000 litres of free water every month before a person can start buying the prepaid water. This is yet again one very untrue promise which will never come to suffice. If Council is already battling to raise $50 000 a month to pay ZINWA where will it get money to give us 2000 litres each x 100 000 of us FREE water every month? They also claim that they have sourced a supplier who will supply the prepaid meters for Gwanda at $300 per gadget and that funding for the meters has been sourced. If council has that kind of money somewhere in its unknown reserves why don't they just take that money and sort out their billing section, pay ZINWA and repair the water infrastructure then we start talking about the prepaid meters.
In that regard the residents had decided to go out and send a collective message to the Minister that the residents of Gwanda or even a section there to are actually saying NO TO THE UNILATERAL INSTALLATION OF PREPAID WATER METERS not this misconception that the whole of Gwanda has said YES to the meters.
2) Processes leading to the demonstration
i) Residents Meeting 25 September 2015
On Friday 25 September 2015 a public meeting for all Gwanda Residents was convened by the Gwanda Civil Society Organisations in collaboration with the Gwanda Residents Association, to discuss the critical water situation which had seen 95% of the town go for seven days without a drop of water coming from their taps. Exactly 237 residents attended the meeting and signed the attendance registers. In the meeting the residents brought up the four issues raised above and demanded that the Residents Association immediately organize and lead a residents demonstration which the meeting wanted to take place on Monday the 5th of October 2015.
ii) Notice to the police and mobilization
On Monday 28 October 2015 a hand written letter notice to the police notifying them of the intended residents' demonstration set for the 7th of October was submitted to the police.
- On Tuesday the 29th the police summoned the Residents Association to report to the police PISI department where the residents were told to rephrase the letter and if possible put it on an official letter head which was done and resubmitted on Wednesday the 30th of September.
On Thursday the police called again to say that the notice lacked some information. This was duly provided in another letter dated the 1st of October 2015.
- On Friday 2 October, the Officer in Charge Gwanda Urban called the residents representatives to his office to also seek clarity on two issues which were duly explained to him verbally and he verbally okayed the demonstration and assured of a police escort on the day of the demonstration.
- After that clearance we immediately announced to our systems that the demo had been cleared and mobilization could be intensified.
- On Monday 5 October at 15:00hrs we were summoned by the police again to appear this time as a full executive of the Residents Association committee to the Dispol's office. It was then that the Dispol announced to the Residents Committee that the police have been told by the Municipality of Gwanda that they had met with the Minister of Water who has indicated that Gwanda will immediately be supplied with uninterrupted water supply and so they can no longer sanction the demonstration.
- All efforts to convince the police against the cancellation of the demonstration fell on deaf ears until a section of the residents representative gave in to the police order after threats that if the demonstration went ahead members of the Residents Association Committee would be arrested for leading an illegal demonstration.
iii) Council, ZINWA and Residents Meeting
Upon serving the police with the intention to demonstrate, an email with the notice of the demonstration and reasons there to was sent to both ZINWA and council on Wednesday 30th September asking for their representatives to be available in Gwanda on the day of the demonstration to receive petitions from the residents.
On receiving the email ZINWA immediately asked the residents committee to come for a meeting at the ZINWA water treatment plant on Thursday morning. The meeting was duly held as scheduled. The residents indicated to ZINWA that it was not fair to only have ZINWA in the meeting as the meeting would be biased to the ZINWA side of the story only. Council was therefore invited to attend the meeting which continued later that evening.
The meeting agreed to allow ZINWA and Council to have four days in which to go and deliberate and try to have a solution to the problem and advise the residents of the outcome of their deliberations. The report back was expected on Monday the 5th of October after which if a workable solution around the issues presented was found consideration on the demonstration would be made.
At the end of the four days nothing was presented back to the residents by both ZINWA and Council which left residents believing that the demonstration was therefore going ahead. It was only on Monday that the residents heard it from the police at the police station that the demo could no longer go ahead as Council had indicated that the Minister had given a directive on the water supply which rendered the demonstration unnecessary.
3) Conclusion and way forward
i) The Gwanda Residents Association is extremely disappointed by both Council and ZINWA who after their alleged deliberations with the Minister decided not to come back to the residents and issue a report back as agreed but opted to rather take the matter to the police who were never party to the negotiations.
ii) We are also disappointed by the police as a regulating authority in that they decided to call off our demonstration and declare it illegal after only listening to one side of the matter and not giving us residents an option to withdraw the demonstration out of our own free will if we felt it necessary as the party that had notified of the demonstration.
iii) The residents of Gwanda were also left not convinced on the strength of the guarantee issued by the Minister as several other similar guarantees that water will be supplied to residents have previously been made and no change was seen.
iv) ZINWA has also issued a very contradicting statement in The Chronicle of 7 October which leaves the whole situation even more confusing and not guaranteeing a continuous supply of water to Gwanda.
v) Finally, the Gwanda Residents Association would like to apologise to the residents for the inconvenience that was caused by the abrupt cancellation of the demo and promise to sit down as a matter of urgency and sort out the internal issues that may have contributed to the abortion of the demonstration, corrective measures made accordingly and another notice for the demo immediately be made to the police as there is no likelihood of any of our issues being attended to in the set up presented.
Issued by Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo
Spokesperson Gwanda Residents Association (gwandfaresidentsassociation@gmail.com)
1) Background:
The background to the Gwanda water crisis is on four basic issues which are what the residents' grievances leading to a demand for a demonstration bordered on.
i. DUAL ADMINISTRATION OF WATER SUPPLY
The water administration in Gwanda is still the only one in all urban centers in the country under a dual administration system where ZINWA (the Zimbabwe National Water Authority) purifies water and sells it to Council before it is eventually sold to residents. This dual administration of water has led to a situation where we have two bulls fighting for the control of one center and in the end it is us the residents who suffer the consequences of the fight.
As things stand right now Council owes ZINWA an amount of $8.6 Million which ZINWA is demanding from Council and there by continuously rationing water in order to force for payment from Council. Under normal circumstances, Gwanda needs water to be pumped for 24 hours in order for all areas to get water. During the ZINWA rationing water is pumped for as low as 4 hours a day which leaves the town nearly without water at all. In the recent days residents have had to endure up to as long as 7 days without a drop of water coming from the taps in 95% areas of the town.
In follow ups on where and what the problem between Council and ZINWA is, Council has put the blame on ZINWA and repeatedly told residents that the solution to the problem is to have ZINWA out of the water administration system in the town. In several public meetings with residents Council has openly expressed their failure to get ZINWA out of the system and called on residents to join Council in getting rid of ZINWA.
On the other hand ZINWA puts blame on Council claiming that Council does not have the financial and technical ability to run the water treatment plant as yet and in any case before the plant is handed over to Council serious commitment needs to be given by Council on how the $8 million debt will be sorted out a commitment which is said to be lacking from council.
As a result of this the residents then decided to go on the demonstration sending a message demanding for the immediate removal of ZINWA from the water supply network in Gwanda.
ii. COUNCIL WATER DEPARTMENT ISSUES
Over a very long time residents of Gwanda have been up in arms with the Council's water department from the billing of water to the operations and maintenance of the water infrastructure.
The residents have been receiving outrageous bills from council and in other cases no bills being received at all. In several cases residents have had to go and query the bills with council and in most cases Council has reversed the transactions, which leaves a huge doubt on the Council's billing system. It is shocking to residents that on average an average Gwanda family of four is billed about 25 cubic meters of water which is 25 000 litres of water per month something which residents view as extremely impossible. Council also uses two Meter Readers for all the meters in the town. On several occasions it has be proven to council that the Meter Readers are not reading the meters and that its highly impossible that two people can read all the meters in the town every month.
The residents are also not happy with the way Council doesn't seem to give water supply a priority in their operations. Water infrastructure is left leaking for long periods with a point of reference being the main water supply pipe which was left leaking for close to three years with nothing done to it and millions of cubic meters of clean water lost. This none prioritization of water is also seen in the way council receives its revenue. When a person goes to pay an amount to Council the allocation of the payment gives water the least allocation which we take to be deliberately done so that Council avoids paying ZINWA for water in order to direct funds to its other none essentials like Travelling and Subsistence vote which is always ballooning.
The residents therefore sort by means of the demonstration to send a clear message to council that the water department at council needed to be sorted out. In several meetings between residents and Council, residents have called on Council to separate the water bills from other Council bills so that when a resident pays for water the payment for water is handled on its own on a separate account which council has failed or refused to implement.
iii. WATER DEBTORS TO COUNCIL
At almost every opportunity that Council gets to explain their service delivery failures particularly on water, they always give an excuse that they are failing to deliver because residents are not paying their bills to Council. As residents we find this as a very lame excuse from Council not warranting to be called a reason for their failures.
Facts which we have gathered as residents are that Government Departments, Parastatals and the Commercial Sector owe Councils millions of dollars. We can prove it beyond any measure of doubt that contrary to what Council says, the ordinary residents of Gwanda are doing their utmost best albeit under the harsh economic environment to settle their bills more so the water bills. It is a fact that Council is always spanner ready to cutoff water supplies to any resident who defaults in their water payments and so can never be true that the residents owe Council so much of the $8 million due to ZINWA.
As at June 2013 when Government slashed all the residents bills owing to Councils, Municipality of Gwanda was owing ZINWA $7.8 million dollars and ZINWA as per directive slashed all the water amount that was slashed off the Council bills by Government and this amounted to $3.2 million leaving government departments and the commercial sector whose bills were not slashed owing the remaining $4.6 million dollars. This revelation by ZINWA came as a shock to us residents as we were always lied to by our Council claiming that they can't settle the ZINWA bill because they had their bills slashed while the same was not extended to ZINWA.
In a recent meeting, when residents sort to know from the Mayor and Council how much in real figures Government Departments and Parastatals owed Council the Mayor indicated that these owed Council a mere $600 000 a figure which the residents heavily disputes as it is deliberately designed to inflict a sense of not being responsible on the part of the residents. If indeed these departments owed Council $600 000 by September 2015 from $4.2 million in June 2013 why is Council still owing ZINWA $8.2 million? Where was the $4 million dollars paid by government departments in the last three years used and why was it not paid to ZINWA?
Secondly, if out of the $8.6 million owing to ZINWA residents who owed zero to Council by June 2013 now owe Council $8 million dollars how much is Council charging residents for water? Fact is that ZINWA is billing Council an average $150 000 per month which means that in the 26 months to September 2015 $3 900 000 was billed to Council by ZINWA which clearly shows that nothing was paid to Council by Government Departments and proves a point that the residents were lied to by council on who really is crippling Council.
Over and above this, the ZINWA debt accumulates and interest of an average $50 000 per month which means that throughout the years that Council has been failing to pay the minimum $50 000 per month requirement by ZINWA not only was the principal amount not being serviced but the interest itself.
Residents therefore took decided to go out and send a message demanding for Government to settle its debts with Council in order for council to be able to deliver services.
iv. PREPAID WATER METERS
Residents of Gwanda were shocked by media reports last week that the Minister of Local Government had visited Gwanda and was told by our Council that we the residents of Gwanda had unanimously demanded that Council installs prepaid water meters to all the houses in Gwanda. This according to media was said to be the best way that Council was going to raise funds in order to settle the ZINWA debt and have ZINWA relinquish the treatment plant to Council.
This extremely misplaced statement by our Council to the Minister not only angers us as residents of Gwanda but makes a huge fool of us as the people of Gwanda in that whereas the whole of Zimbabwe and the region are fighting against the idea of prepaid meters we appear to be the only ones lobbying for the meters to be installed in our houses. We have by means of correspondence, petitions, statements and open meetings made it clear to our Council and all concerned that as residents of Gwanda we are totally against the unilateral installation of prepaid water meters. We have given all the reasons that the world over gives against the enforced use of prepaid meters and further scaled the matter down to our own locality to say that the economic conditions in our town and the high unemployment rate in the town will not be conducive for prepaid water in Gwanda.
Our Council has repeatedly told residents that when they install the prepaid water meters they will give each person 2000 litres of free water every month before a person can start buying the prepaid water. This is yet again one very untrue promise which will never come to suffice. If Council is already battling to raise $50 000 a month to pay ZINWA where will it get money to give us 2000 litres each x 100 000 of us FREE water every month? They also claim that they have sourced a supplier who will supply the prepaid meters for Gwanda at $300 per gadget and that funding for the meters has been sourced. If council has that kind of money somewhere in its unknown reserves why don't they just take that money and sort out their billing section, pay ZINWA and repair the water infrastructure then we start talking about the prepaid meters.
In that regard the residents had decided to go out and send a collective message to the Minister that the residents of Gwanda or even a section there to are actually saying NO TO THE UNILATERAL INSTALLATION OF PREPAID WATER METERS not this misconception that the whole of Gwanda has said YES to the meters.
2) Processes leading to the demonstration
i) Residents Meeting 25 September 2015
On Friday 25 September 2015 a public meeting for all Gwanda Residents was convened by the Gwanda Civil Society Organisations in collaboration with the Gwanda Residents Association, to discuss the critical water situation which had seen 95% of the town go for seven days without a drop of water coming from their taps. Exactly 237 residents attended the meeting and signed the attendance registers. In the meeting the residents brought up the four issues raised above and demanded that the Residents Association immediately organize and lead a residents demonstration which the meeting wanted to take place on Monday the 5th of October 2015.
ii) Notice to the police and mobilization
On Monday 28 October 2015 a hand written letter notice to the police notifying them of the intended residents' demonstration set for the 7th of October was submitted to the police.
- On Tuesday the 29th the police summoned the Residents Association to report to the police PISI department where the residents were told to rephrase the letter and if possible put it on an official letter head which was done and resubmitted on Wednesday the 30th of September.
On Thursday the police called again to say that the notice lacked some information. This was duly provided in another letter dated the 1st of October 2015.
- On Friday 2 October, the Officer in Charge Gwanda Urban called the residents representatives to his office to also seek clarity on two issues which were duly explained to him verbally and he verbally okayed the demonstration and assured of a police escort on the day of the demonstration.
- After that clearance we immediately announced to our systems that the demo had been cleared and mobilization could be intensified.
- On Monday 5 October at 15:00hrs we were summoned by the police again to appear this time as a full executive of the Residents Association committee to the Dispol's office. It was then that the Dispol announced to the Residents Committee that the police have been told by the Municipality of Gwanda that they had met with the Minister of Water who has indicated that Gwanda will immediately be supplied with uninterrupted water supply and so they can no longer sanction the demonstration.
- All efforts to convince the police against the cancellation of the demonstration fell on deaf ears until a section of the residents representative gave in to the police order after threats that if the demonstration went ahead members of the Residents Association Committee would be arrested for leading an illegal demonstration.
iii) Council, ZINWA and Residents Meeting
Upon serving the police with the intention to demonstrate, an email with the notice of the demonstration and reasons there to was sent to both ZINWA and council on Wednesday 30th September asking for their representatives to be available in Gwanda on the day of the demonstration to receive petitions from the residents.
On receiving the email ZINWA immediately asked the residents committee to come for a meeting at the ZINWA water treatment plant on Thursday morning. The meeting was duly held as scheduled. The residents indicated to ZINWA that it was not fair to only have ZINWA in the meeting as the meeting would be biased to the ZINWA side of the story only. Council was therefore invited to attend the meeting which continued later that evening.
The meeting agreed to allow ZINWA and Council to have four days in which to go and deliberate and try to have a solution to the problem and advise the residents of the outcome of their deliberations. The report back was expected on Monday the 5th of October after which if a workable solution around the issues presented was found consideration on the demonstration would be made.
At the end of the four days nothing was presented back to the residents by both ZINWA and Council which left residents believing that the demonstration was therefore going ahead. It was only on Monday that the residents heard it from the police at the police station that the demo could no longer go ahead as Council had indicated that the Minister had given a directive on the water supply which rendered the demonstration unnecessary.
3) Conclusion and way forward
i) The Gwanda Residents Association is extremely disappointed by both Council and ZINWA who after their alleged deliberations with the Minister decided not to come back to the residents and issue a report back as agreed but opted to rather take the matter to the police who were never party to the negotiations.
ii) We are also disappointed by the police as a regulating authority in that they decided to call off our demonstration and declare it illegal after only listening to one side of the matter and not giving us residents an option to withdraw the demonstration out of our own free will if we felt it necessary as the party that had notified of the demonstration.
iii) The residents of Gwanda were also left not convinced on the strength of the guarantee issued by the Minister as several other similar guarantees that water will be supplied to residents have previously been made and no change was seen.
iv) ZINWA has also issued a very contradicting statement in The Chronicle of 7 October which leaves the whole situation even more confusing and not guaranteeing a continuous supply of water to Gwanda.
v) Finally, the Gwanda Residents Association would like to apologise to the residents for the inconvenience that was caused by the abrupt cancellation of the demo and promise to sit down as a matter of urgency and sort out the internal issues that may have contributed to the abortion of the demonstration, corrective measures made accordingly and another notice for the demo immediately be made to the police as there is no likelihood of any of our issues being attended to in the set up presented.
Issued by Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo
Spokesperson Gwanda Residents Association (gwandfaresidentsassociation@gmail.com)
Source - Bekezela Maduma Fuzwayo
