Residents in Section 7 of Cowdray Park, Bulawayo, are facing extended periods without any tap water leaving them struggling to meet basic needs and fearing for their health.
The city is currently under a 120-hour watershedding schedule, as a means to address acute water shortage in the city.
A CITE news crew visited the affected area and the residents raised concerns that their area does not get water per the stipulated timetable because of their altitude.
They said they had gone for almost seven weeks without water, while other areas have gone for longer periods.
One of the residents, Piolie Moyo, said some sections have gone for months without running water and they end up buying water from private companies.
“Our section has serious water shortages. When water is reconnected as per schedule, we do not get any on this side. We do not even have a borehole to serve as an alternative source,” Moyo said.
“City council is not providing us with alternative sources. We have a community Jojo tank that was donated to us by well-wishers. We have called the council on several occasions, asking them to come and fill up the Jojo so that we get water but they do not come as regularly as we need them. People are now paying private companies that have bowsers for water. This becomes a double expense as we have to buy water from elsewhere yet we still have to pay our monthly bills. We are paying for a service that we are not getting.”
Another resident, who asked not to be named, said they had gone for almost seven weeks without running water from their taps and they only got some on Thursday.
“We had gone for almost seven weeks without water. The problem is this section is on higher ground than other areas so some residents will be having water and others will not. When they reconnect the water as per the water-shedding schedule, we may get water for only three hours, at very low pressure and we hardly fill up our containers,” the resident said.
“We do have a community Jojo tank, but because of the many households that are affected, we get at least only six buckets per household in about three days ir more. We fear for our health especially considering that there are cholera cases in the country.”
Residents’ chairperson for Section 7, Chipa Nechironga, said they held a meeting with an engineer from the city council to come up with solutions to the water crisis.
“We had a meeting with an engineer from the council. He explained to us that Cowdray Park was divided into two, there is Cowdray Park and Garikai. He said the division was to facilitate the distribution of water but it seems like the challenge is still there. He said there might be a need to have a third division so that the distribution can be improved,” Nechironga said.
“The engineer said they will sit down as council and hopefully by January 2, 2024, they would have come up with a timetable to serve all the three subdivisions. In the meantime, we will be using the alternative sources that we have always been using. We have received some relief from Schweppes at some point, who came to fill up our community Jojo tank. We hope that this water crisis we are facing will be resolved quickly.”
