Cholera outbreak blamed on Mugabe sanitation policy :: Mmegi Online

GWERU: With over 600 cholera deaths and 13, 000 infections recorded in Zimbabwe since the outbreak of the disease, and now silently spilling into neighbouring countries of Botswana and South Africa, many people are blaming Robert Mugabe's ill-informed water and sewage management policies for the crisis.

Following the March 29 elections, which Morgan Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) is believed to have won, water and sewerage reticulation functions were wrestled from MDC-dominated municipalities and concentrated in the hands of the incapacitated and dysfunctional Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA).

The city of Harare, the epicentre of the cholera epidemic, draws its water for domestic, industrial and other uses from Lake Chivero or Lake Mcllwaine, so named after the late Sir Robert Mcllwaine, a former judge of the Zimbabwe High Court and soil and water conservationist.

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