Water shortages continue to hit Chegutu

By Terry Mutsvanga

Ambuya Joyce Mariga (64) painstakingly pushes her old battered wheelbarrow which is heavily loaded with six tins of water along a dusty road tarmac that leads to her home.

Heavy drips of sweat trickle down her old wrinkled face as she narrates her daily ordeal that she endures in the small farming town of Chegutu where perennial water shortages have continued to hit hard on elderly citizens and the rest of the community.

“We are now used to this kind of lifestyle every day. What puzzles me is that the town has been receiving adequate rainfall but it’s only our residential area that has no tapped water yet we pay monthly water charges to council,” she said.

Such a testimony is one of many that are echoed by scores of residents in Chegutu’s Pfupajena high-density suburb were residents have not been receiving any water supplies at their homes for the past eight years.

What actually dismays the residents of Ward 8 and Ward 9 is that they continue to receive monthly water bills.

According to one water statement bill, the residents pay an average of $10 for water and other related charges. They say they have no option but to pay since they dread the council’s debt collectors and municipal police officers who are notorious for confiscating assets of defaulters.

“This is really unfair. The council bills us and they say we receive water yet there hasn’t been any. We have tried to raise our case but nothing has materialized. If we don’t pay up, the council employs debt collectors and scores of residents have lost their assets,” said Roselyn Sakala.

In a survey conducted by this reporter, there are about 400 households that are in ward 8 and 9 and this translates to about $4000 that is collected from the residents monthly.

So critical is the water situation to the extent that women and children spend much of their prime time at the two worn out boreholes.

Investigations conducted with regards to the council operations revealed that the management has been awarding themselves obscene salaries and other benefits that include cell phone and travelling allowances at the expense of deteriorating service delivery.

For instance according to a salary schedule that was shown to this reporter, the Town Clerk takes an average of $8000 including allowances and together with his management they receive brand new vehicles yearly which they can buy back at cheaper prices after every three years.

All this against the backdrop of council owing workers thousands of dollars in outstanding salaries

However sanity sanity seems to be slowly restored after the arrival of a new Finance Director a Mr Mhaka who is said to have cracked the whip on the outrageous spending at Town House and slashed the salaries of the council management and perks.

For the first time in as many months the employees received their full January salaries.

One council employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said that he was grateful to having been paid in time and said:

“Truly speaking I was overwhelmed when I received my salary in full. This council has been dragging its feet in paying us full salaries and am glad that the new Finance Director is actually doing a good job’.

Efforts to get a comment from the Town Clerk, Alexio Mandigo were fruitless since he was always said to be busy and ignored phone calls.

Most of the council’s water pipes were laid during the colonial era and have not been replaced.

Last year the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) wanted to finance a project to replace the worn out pipes but this was shelved after some ZANU PF members demanded that all prospective employees should have a letter requesting employment written by a Chief.

In 2008 the town was hit hard by a Cholera outbreak that killed about 1000 people and residents are still wary about a return of the deadly pandemic.