Story by John Nhandara
Harare City Council is operating at below capacity in the production of water for the capital owing to a number of challenges at its sewage and water treatment plants.
Residents are receiving 300 megalitres of water per day, against a demand of about 1 000 megalitres as the city council is currently operating below capacity.
This emerged during an appreciation tour of Morton Jaffrey Water Works and Firle Sewage Treatment works by a technical committee formed to address the on-going water supply crisis in the city.
Harare City Council Acting Town Clerk, Engineer Phakamile Mabhena Moyo told the ZBC News, “For Harare we are currently treating water at our Morton Jaffrey Water Works and we not operating at full capacity. We have an installed capacity of 614 mega litres but we are only producing 300 megalitres. This is as a result of high cost of treating water from Lake Chivero which is heavily polluted. Some of our chlorifiers are also not working and need repairs.”
Meanwhile, the city council’s sewage treatment facilities that include Firle Sewage Treatment plant in Harare have been severely impacted by inadequate processing capabilities as a result of archaic equipment, leading to significant reductions in water production.
“Our sewage treatment works are not operating at full capacity. Ordinarily, our production capacity is at 176 megalitres per day against our capacity of 234. We are producing 72 megalitres,” said Director Water, Engineer Tapiwa Kunyadini.
Harare Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Senator Charles Tawengwa said they are looking into medium to long term solutions to address the situation.
“We saw the challenges that include equipment and also power supply challenges. We want to improve the situation hence our visit here. We are now going to come up with solutions which will improve the situation,” he said.
The presidential borehole sinking programme being carried out in both urban and rural areas has helped in improving access to clean water for residents.
