Municipality operations grind to a halt in Marondera

By Tichaona Sibanda
31 January 2007

The municipality of Marondera has been forced to cancel all its services to the town’s ratepayers following a serious shortage of cash flow, newsreel learned on Wednesday.

The town has also gone for more than two months without water after equipment at the water pump station broke down. Piniel Denga, the MDC’s provincial secretary for Mashonaland East said the city fathers had failed to secure foreign currency to buy new parts for the plant.

Last week the civil protection unit moved in to avert an imminent health disaster in the town by providing more water bowsers for schools and public institutions. Refuse hasn’t been collected for many weeks and sewage is flowing uncontrolled through the streets of the town.

The local authority issued a public notice in November last year informing residents that council would be implementing a ‘water demanding management programme’ until further notice. As a stop gap measure the municipality has been drawing untreated water from Rufaro dam. Supply from this source is however pumped out at different intervals to different sections of the town.

‘What is surprising everyone us is that dams that supply the town with water are all 92 percent full. So it’s not that there is no water in the dams but council has no money to repair the equipment that broke down last year. If a sewage pipe breaks near your house they ask you to buy diesel for the council to attend to that fault,’ Denga said.

It has emerged that the Municipality has also run out of water treatment chemicals owing to the financial constraints and the local authority was also yet to pay workers their December and January salaries.

Denga rapped the council for its inefficiency, saying residents have not yet received their water bills for the last two months and yet the local authority expects to raise revenue. At the moment council is drawing water straight from Rufaro Dam, which is heaving contaminated by human waste.