No water, typhoid and a failed city council
Since late October this year, 211 cases of typhoid have been reported in Harare. Reported cases of typhoid within Harare have opened a Pandora’s Box.
Though no deaths have been recorded so far, questions have been asked as to how a primitive disease such as typhoid can cause havoc in a country that has proper infrastructure in place for the supply of clean water.
Bigger questions are centred on how a country that has attained so much progress in health continues to experience typhoid cases.
Last year, Harare’s Mabvuku suburb was hit by a typhoid outbreak and hundreds of residents feared for their lives as the disease spread like a veld fire across the suburbs.
Then Harare City Council authorities claimed that they had contained the outbreak. Now a year later, the disease has resurfaced in Dzivarasekwa suburbs, making it clear that that only a temporary solution had been found.
More than 200 cases of the disease have so far been reported.
The underlying factor behind the outbreak of typhoid is the shortage of water.
Mabvuku is one place where residents struggle to get access to clean water. The residents have dug wells while boreholes have been sunk as alternative sources of clean water.
While for years Harare residents had thought that water problems are for those living in Eastern suburbs, which are furthest from Motorn Jeffrey Waterworks, the problems have come close next door. Suburbs such as Dzivarasekwa, Budiriro, Highfield, Glen Norah and Glen View also have serious water problems. Pessimists say the situation will become even worse while prophets of doom say the whole capital will end up being supplied by boreholes and wells.
But the million-dollar question is, has Harare really come to such a stage whereby residents have to accept that the city fathers cannot provide water?
Harare Residents’ Trust Coordinator, Mr Precious Shumba sees the typhoid outbreak as a sign of a gloomy future unless drastic measures are urgently taken.
For local government expert, Mr Percy Toriro, the typhoid outbreak in Harare is a clear sign of a failed system.
For years, the Harare City Council has been talking about alternative water sources but no action has really taken place on the ground. The peg that was planted at the proposed site of Kunzvi Dam ages ago has now gathered rust and has probably disappeared by now. Kunzvi Dam is a long-term solution.
Yet, the painful fact about Harare is that the council is simply failing to harness water from dams, purify it and supply residents who pay exorbitant charges every month.
While we huff and puff trying to find solutions, it is sad to realise that the capital’s authorities are clueless. The authorities have no solution to the capital’s water woes and are not treating the matter with the urgency it deserves.
For the ordinary person in Mabvuku, who has not accessed tap water for years, the question is: Can such a council continue to be entrusted with such a vital service delivery? Does the council still have a right to collect water rates? Or is it a matter of wrong people being given such an important mandate?
I remember the days when water in the taps sometimes used to come out cloudy and with a strong smell of the purification chemicals the City Council would use on the water. When this would happen some of us would complain that they were using too many of these purification chemicals and that they made the water taste ‘funny’. Indeed, others amongst us even wondered if these chemicals might be poisonous or harmful to our health. Ah, the good old days!
The water that comes out of our taps today is now harmful, and with its signature tinge of yellow-brown, is now a far cry from the cloudy, overly clean waters of old.
Many of Harare’s resident’s don’t even get to see this dirty water gushing out of their taps, as they no longer get City Council water. As a result, many are using and reusing dirty water from anywhere and everywhere. The water in Harare is no longer safe. In its latest assault on the City of Harare, the deadly water has hospitalised 211 (and counting) people. With the memory of the cholera outbreak of 2008 still fresh in our minds, I am perplexed that the council is doing absolutely nothing, when they know only too well how bad the situation can become.