Harare City Council yesterday cut water supplies to the entire Harare metropolitan area, citing the shortage of critical treatment chemicals.

Speaking at a Policy Dialogue Forum organised by the Community Water Alliance, following the shocking developments in Harare, Combined Harare Residents Trust Director, Ms Loreen Mupasiri Sani, immediately called on government to declare water a national disaster in the country.

Mupasiri – Sani lamented poor economic performance coupled with lack of financial capacity in the City of Harare and Central Government to arrest the water crisis hence, the need to declare water a national disaster to allow other players to assist in water provision.

The government of Zimbabwe allocated a paltry ZWL$37million when the local authority required US700million to rehabilite water infrastructure for the improvement of water supplies into the capital city and surrounding metropolis.

Council spokesman Mr Michael Chideme said Harare’s water treatment plant, Morton Jaffray, had stopped pumping water because council was incapacitated.

“As we speak, Morton Jaffray is not operating, we ran out of the critical chemicals early this morning (Monday) and the plant had to be shut down so we have to run around to try and get supplies from even suppliers whom we do not have contracts with.”

Mr Chideme said firms could only supply water chemicals after 24 hours, being time for delivery.

“They (chemicals) have to be imported so right now they are busy trying to organise the shipment of the consignment into Zimbabwe and subsequently to Harare so that we can resume treatment of water,” said Mr Chideme.

“If you have been following our arguments on water, even if the chemicals were to come today we cannot exceed our treatment capacity of around 300 million litres a day now, because of the poor quality of the raw water in our dams and also the dwindling levels of water in the dams in Lake Chivero and Lake Manyame.”

He also cited drought as the major cause of water shortages.

“We have also shut down one of our water treatment plants, Prince Edward because Seke and Harava dams are dry. There is no longer any water to treat so we are in a drought season.

“The only solution that will allow everybody to get water is the construction of new additional water bodies,” he said.

Harare City Council acting Mayor, Councillor Enock Mupamawonde said the situation has reached alarming levels.

“It is quite stressful. We do not see the situation improving if nothing is done very soon. It is the reason why we make the appeal to central Government to avail at least $20 million to procure chemicals,” he said.

Currently the $1billion RTGS debt owed to the City of Harare for water, 45% of the debt is owed by the government of Zimbabwe.

Councillor Mupamawonde pleaded to the government of Zimbabwe to give heed to the calls by City of Harare, Civic Society and Residents Associations to declare Water a National Disaster.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Mr Nick Mangwana confirmed that the Government released the $37,4 m to Harare City Council and pointed out that the city’s incapacitation had everything to do with the local authority’s management.

“I can confirm that the Government has released funds to Harare City Council,” Mr Mangwana said.

“The move was initiated by the Government and not the council. The Harare City Council’s billing has not been functioning for the past five months that is the reason why they are broke. It is an inefficient council putting the life of the residents at risk. The Government will not fold its hands,” said Mr Mangwana.

“We cannot have a council politicking. We cannot politicise the issue of water. There is no need to play around with residents lives,” he said

Harare Residents Trust director Mr Precious Shumba said the city fathers had failed hence the central Government should intervene.

“Its high time the Government sent a clear message to errant councillors who are failing to provide clean water to residents,” he said.

“There is lack of planning and sensitivity in the part of the city fathers. They should not blame the central Government using Kunzvi dam as scapegoat

“I understand 60 percent of treated water was leaking during the distribution network process, illegal connection of water by the Harare City Council engineers, hence the City council is responsible,” he said.