NED People Drink Dirty Water

Pini Bothoko | Monday November 23, 2015 11:45

The district has been going through a serious water crisis for a number of years, the situation that Water Utilities Corporation (WUC) seems to be failing to address.

In almost every full council meeting, councillors raise the matter pleading for the council’s intervention but the situation is seemingly far from abating.

During a similar meeting this week, councillors accused WUC of failure to provide the district with water. The councillors said they had been pleading with WUC for years to solve the water crisis without avail.

Councillors said the residents were unhappy because the problem was not getting solved.

They stated that during the 2014 general elections campaign, they promised the electorates that they would solve the water crisis but were not doing so.

Councillor Bakani Badziili of Siviya said he complained about the water shortage in his area for years but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

He said due to this situation, people have resolved to fetch water from the river and use it for consumption. Badziili said the situation had existed ever since WUC took over the water provision service from the council years back.

Isaac Pelaelo, the councillor for Tsamaya, said feeding had been stopped at the village’s primary school because of shortage of water. He suggested that water tanks, commonly known as Jojo, should be provided at the school.

Another councillor, Kudzani Tobokwani of Themashanga, shared Badziili’s sentiments that WUC was failing to resolve water crisis because it had become an age-old problem.

“Due to this situation, residents have opted to source and drink dirty water from the river,” he said.

“It’s been a month now. People in my area have been struggling without water but only to get water on weekends.”

Tobokwani pleaded with the council to intervene. He also pleaded with WUC to resolve water crisis by pumping water from old boreholes that were used before the construction of Ntimbale dam.

Masunga’s councillor, Elias Mbonini, and Moroka’s councilor Egbert Tshandu also expressed the sad tales of water shortage in their wards.

The WUC general manager for Masunga/Tutume, Abednico Mooka, once admitted that they were not adequately supplying villages in the Tati East constituency with water. Mooka attributed the problem to old pipelines that continually burst because they could not handle the pressure of water from the dam.

 He said the situation would only be solved if their P185 million project earmarked for improving the supply of water in the area could be funded as they are faced with shortage of funds to resolve the matter.