THIRTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD Yeukai Mhondera hardly sleeps, her mind overladen with thoughts of dashing out to harvest rain water from the roof of her home to avert mounting water woes that she and other residents have endured for ages.

JAIROS SAUNYAMA

The mother of three doesn’t have enough sleep each time the rains fall on her corrugated iron roof as she runs with empty 20l containers to harvest water falling from the roof sheets to the ground.

Mhondera has no option but to wait until the last drop of the rain before retiring to sleep again.

This is not Mhondera’s plight alone, but of many women across the country’s towns and cities.

The summer season has brought with it a ray of hope as the rains have become the source of drinking water in most places.

With most taps running dry and borehole water being reported as unsafe, residents especially in Harare, Chitungwiza and Marondera are relying on rain water for drinking.

“This is the safest water we can get here. It comes directly from the sky and I am confident it is not contaminated as compared to borehole and tap water,” said Yemurai Nhekairo of Dombotombo, Marondera.

Some residents have gone to the extent of buying 210 litre containers to store rain water.

“This summer season is a blessing to us and I even bought a drum at Mbare Musika so that I could store rain water in it.

“With that drum I know I can go for a long time with safe water for drinking,” said 60-year-old Tariro Mhundwa from Budiriro surbub.

Drinking water directly from the tap has become a risk. Mhundwa added that before the onset of the rains, she had to boil water and stock it.

There’s hardly water coming out from the tap at most homes presently and stocking rain water has become the order of the day, but before we used to boil the little we got from the tap,” she said.

Municipalities are struggling to supply adequate and clean drinking water to residents. Over the years, there has been an increase in population in cities and towns with corresponding infrastructural development.

Several suburbs in the capital have their taps running two days a week while the city’s eastern suburbs such as Glen Lorne, Borrowdale and Greendale have experienced water woes for years.

This has forced many residents to drill boreholes on their properties. But borehole water is reportedly contaminated, posing health risks to residents.

“We don’t know when we will get water from the municipality. It has been once or twice a year. We had no choice but sink boreholes after realising that council didn’t have the capacity to address this problem,” said Langton Chidamunyu from Glen Lorne.

Zimbabwe has not been spared water borne diseases for the past decade. More than 3 000 cases of typhoid were reported in Harare last year with other small towns recording a number of cases of the similar disease.

Moreover, thousands of people succumbed to cholera and suburbs like Budiriro and Glen View were the most affected.

Last year Harare City Council spokesperson, Leslie Gwindi, said water problems in these suburbs were due to a structural problem that required astronomical amounts of money to resolve.

“That is a universal problem. The areas in question are those that once went for years without water and it requires millions of dollars to sort out the problems. We do not have that kind of money, but we are trying our best to improve the situation,” said Gwindi.

In high-density suburbs like Budiriro, Mufakose and Kambuzuma people are seen queuing at boreholes sunk by Unicef.

But Unicef said the boreholes were a temporal measure.

Speaking at a Unicef Media Capacity Development workshop held in Nyanga in September last year, Unicef Water and Sanitation chief Kiwe Sebunya said there was serious need to rehabilitate old and obsolete water treatment plants as boreholes were not for long-term solution.

“A serious government cannot solve the perennial water crisis in the country’s urban settlements using boreholes as a long-term solution.

“Boreholes are never a long term solution for urban water problems. They were drilled as short-term solutions to mitigate a crisis which was at hand and not as a long-term solution. No government in the world can drill boreholes as a solution to water problems in urban areas because boreholes are rural technology and is not a real long term solution for urban areas,” he said.

Experts have said the current water problems have been caused by rapid population growth after independence in 1980, inadequate rehabilitation and maintenance of water and wastewater treatment plants, expensive technologies and a poor institutional framework.

According to the United Nation’s Human Development Report (2006), at least 1,1 billion people do not have access to clean water and 2,6 billion suffer from inadequate sanitation.

Historically, the growth of cities and towns has been driven by the concentration of investment and employment opportunities in urban areas.

Because productive activities in industry and services cluster in cities, it is estimated that almost 80% of the world’s gross domestic product is generated by urban areas.

Urbanisation also brings with it opportunities for more efficient water management, as well as for the provision of drinking water supply and sanitation services to many people.

As generators of wealth and employment, incubators of innovation and creativity, and providers of the best opportunities to improve livelihoods, cities give great economies of scale and opportunities for efficiency to infrastructure development, including water, sewerage and sanitation services.

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