EMA to set up water testing laboratory in Byo

TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO 

The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) is planning to set up a water testing laboratory in Bulawayo, Business Times can report.

EMA director of environmental protection, Christopher Mashava, said the authority has started flighting tenders for the construction of the laboratory in Bulawayo.

Water is tested to detect pollution or contamination in natural water bodies and the environment. The laboratory also analyses domestic water, mining effluent and industrial effluent, among many.

Water samples from across the country are currently taken to Harare for testing.

“As EMA we have a monitoring function in as far as environmental issues are concerned. We have a laboratory which is ISO certified based in Harare. And this year, going into next year, we are also going to have another lab that is going to be set up here in Bulawayo. We are already at a tendering stage to have that laboratory constructed,” Mashava said.

EMA has one laboratory in Harare, built in 2007, used for biological water testing, soil testing and chemical water testing.

Mashava said EMA takes samples to the Harare laboratory and analyses the quality of water.

The proposed setting up of a laboratory plant in Bulawayo comes as there has been an increase in diarrhoea cases in the city.

Medical experts have since advised residents to boil water first before consumption.

Bulawayo residents have raised concern over the bursting of sewer pipes and increase of dumpsites in residential areas, saying the development was a health time bomb

The city has recorded a series of sewer pipe bursts, which have seen raw effluent flowing into their homes.

Mashava said at least 419 orders were issued to various municipalities in the past 12 years to stop discharging raw effluent into water bodies.

“Even tests for oxygen in all the rivers show that they are struggling to meet the required level due to discharging of waste water and sewage into our rivers. Going forward it means it is going to be difficult to sustain our cities from a water point of view,” he said.