Bulawayo churches become 'water points' to ease shortages
By Takesure Matarise
Harare, 20 September (ENI)--Churches in Bulawayo have begun to supply residents of Zimbabwe's second largest city with water for domestic use, in an attempt to lessen the effects of shortages made worse by a struggle over control of the water supply.
"As the water situation worsens, we have started placing water bowsers at our churches and also at such places as police stations and city council offices accessed by many people," Pastor Ray Motsi, the convenor of Churches in Bulawayo, an interdenominational group, told Ecumenical News International on 20 September.
The city authorities have imposed water-rationing measures that permit residents access to water for only a few hours every three days.
Motsi said Bulawayo's churches were working with the city council to identify the most vulnerable areas. The majority of people affected live in the western suburbs, where most of the city's poor residents are concentrated.
The Zimbabwe government announced in mid-July that it would not take any action to deal with water shortages in the city, which has 1.5 million residents, unless the city council agreed to hand over the supply of water to the State-run Zimbabwe National Water Authority.
The local authority, however, said it would refuse to do this because the government agency is underfunded and has no capacity to control the water supply systems adequately.
A recent Bulawayo council health report said that because of water shortages, some 300 diarrhoea cases were being recorded daily in September at the council's 19 clinics. In August the daily average was 137 cases a day.
Churches in Bulawayo said in a 9 September statement that all churches in the city had been asked to source water from wherever they could, and turn each church into a "water point".
The statement added, "Hearts sank when it was reported in the media that the government will not intervene in the Bulawayo water crisis until such time as the water system in the city was handed to [State-run] ZINWA." [338 words]
Daily News Service
20 September 2007
ENI-07-0731