City of Masvingo should urgently work to overhaul its decayed water infrastructure if the ratepayer is to be saved the burdensome costs being caused by frequent pipe bursts. It has become a common occurrence to get WhatsApp reports of water cuts due to pipe bursts in one area or the other. The problem is that the authorities never seem to have a wholesome comprehension of how systems work together for good or for bad. You cannot repair or upgrade one part of the system and neglect the other and expect the best of results. In 2015, the city council, with the help of development partners; the African Development Bank (ADB), celebrated the completion of a project of increasing pumping capacity at the intake tower in Bushmead so as to improve water supplies to the city. Nobody, however, thought about improving the capacity of the piping system to handle the increased water volumes and the problems are now there for all to see. Our position is that this should be treated as an emergency and it is a surprise that we are not seeing any pipes being overhauled to remedy those costly bursts. What we are seeing, however, are only some frantic attempts to rush and repair the breakage and wait for the next one. This is not helping at all because the system is decayed and has many faulty spots that are more than ready to bubble as soon as the other spot has been repaired. What makes all this all the more troublesome is that each burst comes with a massive cost to the ratepayer not only in terms of repairs but in terms of the thousands of litres of clean water that gets lost with each burst. Given that Mutirikwi Dam is heavily silted and is only 25 percent full with the Meteorological Services Department indicating that the rainy season will begin late this year, it is wise to take all necessary steps to avoid such loss of water. The fact that it takes up to 10 chemicals to purify the dam’s heavily polluted waters to standards acceptable for domestic use should also be enough reason to jolt our overpaid city fathers into making sure that our aged water and sewer infrastructure gets revamped.comment
