…As raw sewer finds its way into the incomplete pipeline
TellZim reporter
It is so near yet so far for the legacy Mucheke Trunk Sewer project, one of the much-talked about project by Masvingo City Council for over a decade now, with completion seemingly out of sight in the foreseeable future.
After the local authority awarded construction tenders to Harare-based Mutual Construction (which later proved to be a bogus as it did not appear on the list of registered engineering firms), progress on the project meant to offer a sigh of relief to the perennial sewer bursts seems to be stalling maybe due to lack of funding or non-effective monitoring mechanisms on the firm doing the work.
Discharge of raw sewer into the incomplete Trunk Sewer
Discharge of raw sewer into Mucheke River through part of the incomplete trunk sewer near the Craft centre has been subject to debate as the local authority could or cannot provide answers as to what could have triggered that health risky move other than attributing the case to vandalism in Masvingo’s Rujeko A suburb.
Masvingo Town Clerk Engineer Edward Mukaratirwa initially attributed the flow of sewer into the river to a vandalism case at House number 3808 Mukute Close in Rujeko A though upon further probe he urged news reporters to act as responsible citizens and report such leakages so that council can act.
“You as a journalist must act as a responsible citizen, take pictures of such areas with burst sewer and report them to our offices so that we can take action,” said Eng Mukaratirwa.
Masvingo Environmental Management Agency (EMA) is also seemingly reluctant to act on the discharge of the raw sewer into the river. The officials insisted that the vandalised deep manhole in Rujeko was the reason behind the flow but would not explain clearly upon further interrogation by this publication which led to a site visit by both EMA and TellZim News crew on May 11 after they had released a statement purporting the issue had been rectified and corrected.
The statement released on May 10 said EMA had advised council to immediately attend to the issue but the flow was temporarily stopped and the following day onwards, the effluent was streaming into Mucheke River.
“Masvingo City Council was ordered to immediately attend to the blocked and vandalised manhole so as to ensure stoppage of discharge into the environment. During the time of inspection on May 10 2022, it was noted that the discharge had stopped. As EMA we strongly advise and urge residents to desist from vandalizing the sewer reticulation infrastructure as the vandalism can lead to environmental pollution as was noted in Rujeko,” read part of the statement.
Funding of the project
The funding of the project after the initial loss of over US$ 4 million to Mutual Construction has been another issue on the project. Though the project started way back before the current administration at Civic Centre, the continued recurrence of MTS on council annual budgets has also irked the emotions of residents who argue the project is now becoming a burden to an already struggling population.
Council has now turned to channelling devolution funds towards the project as they aim to ensure its completion.
Engineer Mukaratirwa confirmed realising ZW$ 120 million in 2021 and ZW$ 100 million this year towards the trunk sewer from Devolution funds.
“In 2021, ZW$ 120 million of devolution funds was allocated towards the trunk sewer but we ended up using only ZW$ 87 million and covered a distance of 1.2 km. This year (2022) ZW$ 100 million was allocated towards works on MTS project and we intend to cover a stretch of 2km,” confirmed Eng Mukaratirwa.
Residents through their resident associations have raised questions as to why the project remains incomplete despite the fact that it continues to chew into the money paid in form of rates. The project is also expected to appear on the local authority’s 2023 budget.
As a result, lack of sufficient funds is likely to derail progress on the project and with this delayed disbursement of devolution funds from Central government coffers, it remains to be seen if the trunk sewer would be ready for use in the near future or there will be delays on completion.
The actual stretch that has been covered is not yet clear and so is the one already covered as the area at the main Masvingo-Beitbridge highway is also yet to be covered.
