Harare (New Ziana) –The continued failure by the Harare City Council (HCC) to provide residents with clean drinking water and to maintain sewer systems over the years is the major cause of the outbreak of cholera being experienced, an official has said.
Executive director of the Harare Residents Trust, Precious Shumba said this in an interview with New Ziana on Thursday.
His comments come after the HCC director of health services Dr Prosper Chonzi on Wednesday declared that the city had been hit by a cholera outbreak, with 21 suspected and 7 confirmed cases.
Chonzi warned residents to be on high alert for the disease, which he said was mainly in the western suburbs.
The western suburbs comprise mostly the high-density suburbs which are generally plagued by shortages of portable water and burst sewer pipes.
“The Harare City Council has failed to deliver on its mandate to provide sewer and water services to the over 2 .5 million residents of the city,” said Shumba.
He said Budiriro, Glen View, Glen Norah and Kuwadzana have been hotbeds of cholera for a very long time, with the 2008 to 2009 outbreak still fresh in the minds of residents.
“You recall that in August 2008 to around May 2009 we had a cholera outbreak that killed around 4 027 people and it was most pronounced in Budiriro and Glen View,” he said.
Shumba said sewer and water reticulation systems were malfunctioning, yet the city council was not taking any action, leaving raw sewage to flow into Lake Chivero from its feeder streams over the years.
“As we speak there are points where untreated sewer is being discharged into our streams that feed into Lake Chivero and there is no urgency on their part except to make pronouncements. We believe that the situation has been neglected for too long,” he said.
Asked whether the HRT had ever engaged the HCC on the matter, Shumba said the city fathers seemed to be pursuing a partisan agenda in dealing with the outbreak.
“We have been engaging councillors in the respective wards, we have been engaging with the city health department, we have raised these safety delivery concerns as the Harare Residents Trust but it would appear that the policy makers are pursuing a very partisan agenda because in areas led by councillors in the minority, the response is very weak and next to actually ignoring,” he said.
Shumba said council neglected areas under minority councillors such as Mbare and others but in others it responded positively to service delivery concerns.
“So we believe that they have politicised service delivery to the extent that they don’t know , they have forgotten their mandate. We have spoken to them but we believe that it is beyond their capacity to address it,” he said.
Cholera, which has been described as a “primitive disease not expected to cause havoc in the 21st Century”, is caused by bacteria called Vibrio Cholerae and is normally associated with poor sanitation and lack of access to clean water.
Drinking water or consuming food contaminated with the bacteria results in illness, which involves acute watery diarrhoea with vomiting, leading to severe dehydration and death if untreated.
New Ziana
