Council dishonest of water crisis magnitude - residents

A cross section of Bulawayo residents have blamed Bulawayo City Council (BCC) for not being honest on the extent of water crisis.

Council initially announced a 48-hour water shedding regime but failed to honor its timetable.

That resulted in a 72 hour water cuts with some areas going beyond that.

In a statement to the media on Monday, council attempted to shed light on the crisis.
 
"The City of Bulawayo would like to advise residents that this was necessitated by the need to increase the levels for Magwegwe Reservoir which supplies most of the Western areas and Tuli Reservoir, supplying most of the eastern areas, which had gone below their critical levels.

"As a result this affected the water pressure in suburbs that had been reconnected with water supplies especially those which were in high lying areas. We have revised the water shedding schedule to 72 hours" it said.

Council also said it was facing power cuts from ZESA.

However, social media users have expressed their distrust on council.


Below are some selected tweets seen by Bulawayo24.com

@BrianCGumbo said "BCC guys are lying some of us have nt seen a drop water for 144 hrs


He added " the only borehole that was sunk some yrs back is down all the surrounding suburbs dnt hv water to be honest we are in a fix".

@byopra said "Even at 72hrs/wk they have failed coz some pple havent had water in 5 days now. And they just ignore tweets now

"The excuse that water comes late in areas on high ground doesn't hold water this time. Its been 4 days! And engineers should factor this in!

"What's disheartening is that there has been no effort to inform residents of what is going on. @CityofBulawayo is not in touch with the pple".

@BusieBhebhe said " I think our council failed to plan clearly. But well we now pray for the rain".

Mat HumanRights Institution said "#Right2Education :Acute #water shortages experienced in #Bulawayo impacting negatively on #Right to #Education - schools with no water too!"