The ManicaPost
Abel Zhakata Senior Reporter
LOCAL authorities have a mandate to provide sufficient, affordable and quality services to residents.
It is their core function as urban governments to provide clean water, sanitation, waste management and housing services and ensure that urban dwellers derive a comfortable and basic livelihood.
In the last two decades, the City of Mutare like most urban councils in the country, has been finding it difficult to efficiently and effectively deliver on its mandate because of a number of obstacles and bottlenecks.
The country is currently experiencing economic challenges that have hit hard on most sectors of commerce and industry and the operations of local governance entities have not been spared either.
However, the problems that are affecting the City of Mutare cannot be solely blamed on the current economic crisis. The bulk of the problems are historical in nature.
The fact that water is not reaching every part of the city despite having plenty of it in Pungwe and Odzani is not because of the effects of the ongoing hyper-inflationary environment.
Sewerage pipelines are bursting daily not because council is failing to buy new ones to replace the aged.
Over the decades, the City of Mutare, particularly the urban settlements, have grown exponentially without service provision facilities following suit.
There is a mismatch. This is so because of poor planning on the part of administrators and city fathers who stood by without taking action while thousands of people moved from the rural areas into the city to eke out a living.
This has put pressure on service delivery resulting in incessant breakdowns and a general decline in quality of the same.
To have a clear grasp of the whole issue it is best to tackle the sticking issues separately.
Sewerage treatment. Mutare has two sewerage treatment plants. The oldest and smallest one is in Sakubva while the bigger one is locate in Dangamvura’s Gimboki high density suburb.
These two plants served the city well 20 years ago because the population was small. Raw sewerage was treated in accordance with international standards and the resultant purified water was left to flow into the Sakubva River and support fauna and flora.
The downstream Dora community benefited heavily from large amounts of purified water which was ideal for small irrigation projects as well as for livestock.
Back then, the Environmental Management Agency had no issues with the local authority because council was doing its part in managing waste.
Instead of investing more money to expand and build more treatment plants in the wake of a growing population which was evidenced by the opening up of a litany of housing projects across the city, the local authority adopted a wait-and-see approach.
In an interview with this publication some years back, the then city engineer Mr Donald Nyatoti said the infrastructure that is serving Mutare now was designed during the colonial era to service just a few people.
The bulk of it has outgrown its life span despite the increasing pressure due to population growth.
Dangamvura high-density suburb has more than doubled in size in the last two decades in terms of housing units while the emergence of squatters has further complicated the situation.
The sewerage system is thus over flooded resulting in incessant bursts that are polluting Nyamauru and Sakubva Rivers.
Council has hit the headlines for the wrong reasons in contemporary times as EMA has taken it to court on several occasions over the issue of raw sewerage that is now flowing in these two rivers.
Residents who live near these rivers are currently a disgruntled lot because of the obnoxious smell they are subjected to by the sewerage that is left to flow downstream.
All this is because the system has been overloaded. The only remedy is to expand it because continuous maintenance is expensive and does to solve the problem.
The same applies to the water situation. Despite Mutare accessing clean enough water from the Pungwe and Odzani water works which requires no pumping to reach households, residents in the city are making nocturnal errands to source water from unprotected sources.
From the water works up to the Christmas Pass tanks the water movement is fine. Problems arise in distribution to the households.
The whole system was designed during the colonial era to service a small city. The water shortages in Mutare are because of a reduced conveyance capacity that is being caused by small pipes which were laid long back and are now expected to service a growing population.
Holding tanks in Chikanga and Dangamvura are not filling up because the rate at which water is being channelled into these tanks by the small feeder pipes is lower than the rate at which residents are using the same water on the other end.
So at the end of the day, despite Mutare having enough water at the Christmas Pass tanks, council is rationing it to enable the small colonial water pipes to move the liquid to holding tanks in the locations. Once the tanks are full water is released but it quickly gets used up because demand is outstripping supply.
A bold move was undertaken to solve this problem in 2010 after council rolled out a project to upgrade the piping system by way of constructing a duplicate line to argument the existing small line.
The noble project was derailed due to corruption. A whopping $330 000 was looted in a tender scandal which sacked management and councillors at the Civic Centre.
Up to now the local authority is battling to recover that money and residents in Dangamvura are bearing the brunt of this corrupt enterprise.
So, despite the prevailing economic challenges, most of the problems facing Mutare are because there was no investment in critical areas in order to expand service delivery and meet the demands of a growing population.
It is as clear as day that the sewerage system that was used in the Rhodesian era can no longer support a growing population of this age. Council has to expand its service delivery options to satisfy new demographic dynamics.
Town Clerk, Mr Joshua Maligwa said the city was lagging behind in terms of water and sewerage system upgrade.
He said the existing system was designed in 1940 and it has since grown old.
He, however, said despite the current economic challenges council was working with the little resources at hand to upgrade the systems and be able to meet current demand.
“In 2017 we started with projects in Dangamvura. In Ward 8 and 7 which encompasses the T-Section of that suburb we up rotted small old water pipes and replaced them with bigger ones that are able to carry more water.
“Our intention is to upgrade the system in Sakubva particularly in Chisamba Singles. We have since done the scope of works and about $200 000 RTGS is required to complete the job. The infrastructure there is in tatters because its old. Pipes burst all the time and we lose clean water,” he said.
“In Chikanga we have replaced the 3km water pipeline that connects the 3 Brigade and the Hilltop water reservoir. That project was done at a cost of US$150 000.
We have also upgraded the pipeline that connects the Hilltop tank and the Nyakamete Industrial Area. On this project council was assisted by Willowton.
The company procured all the material that was required to do the works because it also wanted uninterrupted water supply to its new factory.”
Mr Maligwa said a lot of resources were required to upgrade the sewerage and water system in the city.
Currently, he said, the financial resources council was getting to do upgrades was a drop in the ocean.
