The Harare City Council has started drawing water from Darwendale Dam, 15 km from Morton Jafray Water Works as it tries to finds stop-gap measures to the severe water situation in the capital.

The city has been struggling to provide water constantly to its 2 million residents, with many now surviving on water from unsafe shallow wells or communal boreholes.

The town council communications officer, Innocent Ruwende said the council had started the project of getting water from the Darwendale dam to harness the problem of the insufficient supply of water in the city.

“We have started tapping water from Darwendale dam which is supplying 800 to 1000 mega litres of water which we mix with about 710 mega litres from Lake Chivero to meet the demand.”

“Also the advantage with Darwendale is the water is cleaner than that of lake chivero so it means we use less chemicals to treat the water than that of lake chivero where we are required to use about 9 chemicals to make sure that the is safe for drink,” he added.

Ruwende stressed that there was no need for government intervention since the problem they had was a minor. “Government never put money in this project since the machines and the pipes have a long shelf-life. The only problem that needed to be rectified was of the lift which was used to carry worker about 100m down to work at the Morton Jeffrey.”

The city is also looking at having new water sources. The new dams require government financial support and this is more of medium term project.

“Finance minister Ntuli Ncube in his 2020 national budget said the government is planning to tap water from Kunzvi and Musami dams, which will add value because new suburbs are emerging and more water will be required.”

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By Erasmus Mabhebhura