THERE are few or no words to describe the water crisis in Harare and the rest of the country.
What is coming is far much bigger than we have been told.
It is a catastrophe.
It is a mess.
But, on the whole, it is a humanitarian disaster that needs collective effort.
This is a disaster that is now beyond the local authorities.
Never mind the frantic efforts they have been putting in trying to mask the disaster.
For the sake of the masses, it is not the time to point fingers.
But for the sake of progress, we at least expect the local authorities to own up.
We expect them to be courageous enough to tell us that they have failed to deal with the crisis.
But they will not!
Instead, they will point fingers at Government.
They will accuse it of meddling in their affairs.
They will come up with all sorts of excuses and deflect attention from their failures.
But the statistics are damning.
They point towards incompetence, greed and outright corruption by the local authorities.
The statistics point towards insatiable quest for luxuries at the expense of service delivery.
That is not our brief.
Our mandate is to inform the nation that we are in a deep water crisis.
We are here to provide accurate information on the impending disaster.
If truth be told, local authorities have done little to address the water shortages.
And they have a convenient excuse.
The Harare City Council (HCC) says it is owed $987 million.
The question, therefore, is: What is HCC doing to recover that money?
Have they exhausted all the available channels to recover what they are owed by the ratepayers?
Have they come up with debt relief plans?
If so, what is the latest update on that issue?
So, in comes Government with support to the HCC, but still there is an excuse.
Last week, Government gave HCC $37 million to attend to the current crisis.
The situation has gotten worse.
Instead of having water, taps have, in fact, run dry.
We have been told that HCC collects between $13 million and $20 million every month.
What we have not been told is that it spends $35 million on water treatment chemicals, $12 million on salaries and $8 million on fuel.
These figures do not factor in the critical aspect of service delivery which is their key mandate.
There are solutions to these pervasive problems.
The first one is to attend, as a matter of urgency and without any excuses, the (de)siltation/dredging of Lake Chivero.
Surely this cannot cost the HCC that much, given how they spread around ratepayers’ revenues.
The second issue is to revive the Kunzvi Dam project.
We cannot continue talking about the prospects of a project that can easily attract investors at any given time.
Construction of that dam will alleviate the ongoing water problems in Harare.
Third, is consummation of the US$144 million Chinese project.
Again, this project, which is mired in corrupt activities by HCC officials, is a low hanging fruit.
Let us avoid this problem and save masses from diseases.