UMGUZA Rural District Council has drilled about 85 boreholes in the district to avert a potential disaster in wards where 11 000 families were at risk of poisoning due to the discharge of raw sewer into rivers by Bulawayo City Council. Richard Muponde Senior Reporter
The district has 19 wards. The council’s chief executive officer Collen Moyo confirmed that they were about to complete the drilling of the boreholes, although he did not divulge the amount spent on the project.
“We have so far drilled five boreholes in each ward,” he said.
“We are only left with drilling boreholes in Ward 1 and Ward 15.
“Very soon we will be done with the project.”
Moyo said they would then conduct a review to ascertain if the boreholes were enough to cater for the district.
“If we find that there is need to add more we will do that,” he said.
“But our target is to make sure that every ward gets five boreholes.”
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Moyo said there were a number of dry boreholes in the district.
The pollution in Umguza was so serious that the government set up a task force to probe the matter and present its findings to an inter-ministerial committee tasked with investigating the disaster in Bulawayo and Harare in May.
Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo on May 6 dispatched a team of experts to Umguza, on the outskirts of Bulawayo, to carry out a detailed study on the impact of the contaminated water on agricultural activities and the inhabitants within the area.
