… Msv
tanks, pipes cleaning gone wrong
Wayne
Ncube
Very
poor-quality water like never seen before began coming out of taps in Masvingo
this week after council announced a rare cleaning exercise at the city’s water reservoirs
and some supply pipes.
In many
suburbs, extremely dirty water which was filled with sludge and unfit even for
laundry came out of the taps for four days.
Some
sources privy to the cleaning exercise told TellZim News that a council
employee had either mistakenly or negligently let thousands of litres of clean
water into one of the tanks which was still being cleaned, and council was left
with no option but to pump the sludge into homes to avoid losses.
City of
Masvingo announced that it was going to clean the water reservoirs over Target
Kopje suburb, and the main supply pipes from the Bushmead Water Works in order
to boost water quality but little did residents know that they were to grapple
with sludge coming out of their taps.
A
source from the city council said water was pumped into one of the tanks before
the cleaning exercise had been completed.
“There
was a mistake when water was opened into one of the reserve tanks before the
cleaning work had been completed. This is the water which was coming out of the
taps during the past week,” said the source.
City of
Masvingo engineer Tawanda Gozo said he had expected the quality of water to
revert back to normalcy much earlier than what was reported to have happened in
such suburbs as Rujeko C.
“We
recently cleaned our main water pipes from Bushmead Water Works and the reserve
tanks to improve water quality.
“We
have received reports that in some areas extremely dirty water was coming out
from the taps but that was most probably due to the normal cleaning exercise.
“The
water quality should have improved earlier and I am surprised to be told that
it is a different case in some places. We are ready to investigate,” said Gozo.
Masvingo’s
daily water demand has risen to about 50 megalitres a day while the council has
a pumping capacity of around 30 megalitres.
The
city is struggling to give consistent water supplies and this has made basic home
hygiene more difficult at a time when Covid-19 infections
