BULAWAYO City Council has turned to prayer as the local authority searches for solutions to crippling water shortages and a basket of service delivery challenges such as sewer and pipe bursts.
The city’s residents are going for several days without water owing to dwindling water levels at supply dams with no rains in sight.
The local authority recently asked the government to declare the city a water crisis area to pave the way for international support for short-to-medium term solutions.
Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development minister Anxious Masuka said the government will set up a technical team to study the water levels at the city’s dams before making a decision.
Council has so far decommissioned Umzingwane Dam with Lower Ncema and Upper Ncema dams set to be decommissioned in the next few months.
As the water crisis deepened, the local authority last week held a thanksgiving event that brought together various church denominations, government officials and residents.
Bulawayo mayor David Coltart said poor people from the high density suburbs were the most affected because they could not afford to purchase water tanks and drill boreholes.
“The water situation is affecting mostly the poor people in the high density suburbs,” Coltart said.
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“They go from suburb to suburb searching for water because they cannot afford to buy jojo tanks and drill boreholes, among other things.
“This is the very reason why we saw it fit to hold the prayer day and thanks giving meeting.”
The mayor called on locals to pray for the situation to normalise.
“There are a lot of scriptures which speak about the fact that the Lord has not forgotten us, there is purpose in the situation,” Coltart said.
“We need to pray for funding in order to address the water situation.”
He said the local authority needed at least US$14 million for short-to-medium term interventions to address the crisis.
“Besides that consensus we need to raise about US$150 million to rehabilitate the pump station and a whole lot more,” Coltart said.
“Many of you know we are battling with raw sewage in your yards and unfortunately that is the consequence of our sewerage systems, which are not functioning very well.
“We need to pray that the Lord provides us with the means and opportunities to enable us to rehabilitate the sewerage facilities.”
Bulawayo Provincial Affairs ministry permanent secretary Paul Nyoni, said there was need for local, regional and spiritual leaders to come together and pray for Bulawayo.
"We are here because the Lord wants to be here,” Nyoni said.
“The mayor did mention the reason why we should all be here and it is because we should stay united to fight the water crisis that we face in this city.”
It has also emerged that the water crisis is taking a toll on learners, with students forced to skip lessons to look for the precious liquid in unsafe wells.
Keith Phiri, an academic from Lupane State University, said research showed that students were also failing to concentrate in class as a result.
“Learners are reluctant to drink water because they are saying that borehole water does not taste good enough, hence we are seeing cases of headaches among learners as a result of dehydration,” Phiri said.
“Learners now spend most of their time searching for water…they lose concentration due to the fact that they have to wake up early in the morning to fetch water.
“This also affects their passrate at school."
President Emmerson Mnangagwa last week said the Gwayi-Shangani dam, which is seen as a long lasting solution to the city’s water crisis, would be completed by year end.
Mnangagwa had promised that his administration would complete construction of the dam before the August 2023 elections.
The government had initially said the dam would have been completed in December 2022 before pushing the date to 2023 and now December this year.
