Power outages hit Byo water supplies

TENDAI BHEBE IN BULAWAYO 

 

Intensified power outages have hit the City of Bulawayo, forcing the local authority to shut down water supplies, Business Times can report.

“The city of Bulawayo is currently facing an emergency shut down of water supplies to all residential areas except for industry and the central business district,”  Bulawayo City Council corporate communications manager, Nesisa Mpofu, said.

She added: “The city would like to advise members of the public that we experienced a power outage from Wednesday (last week). And these outages affected Ncema treatment works and Furnhill booster station which result in loss of treatment and pumping of water. As a result our reservoir levels are low across all supply reservoirs.”

Mpofu said there was loss of pumping due to a power outage at the Rochester pump station.

In addition, there was loss of pumping due to power outage at the Rochester pump station in Nyamandlovu resulting in lack of pumping from the Aquifer farm.

“The shutdown will be maintained until restoration of power supply and pumping to enable treatment and to allow the supply reservoirs to satisfactory levels.

“In addition there’s a disruption of the water shedding programme for areas supplied by Tuli  and Hillside reservoirs once supplies are stabilised these areas would then be looked into to see how water can be restored,” she said.

A resident from Entumbane high density suburb Ntando Khupe said he has endured a week without water.

“I wonder how our local authority works. They promise to give us water after three days but in Entumbane it’s almost a week without water running from our taps. How do you justify such a thing? These people should start working for us because as residents we are really disappointed,” she said.

In February, the Bulawayo City Council applied to the Government to declare the city’s water crisis an emergency to enable Government and development partners to mobilise resources towards provision of water in the city.

 

 

 

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