Pressure mounts on Harare City to halt water privatisation

By Own Correspondent

Many stakeholders are resisting Harare municipality’s move to privatise the water supply, and a local civic organisation has since written to the mayor, Jacob Mafume, to stop this.

The Community Water Alliance wrote the letter questioning the legality of Harare City’s announcement that it had engaged Helcraw Electrical and Lyson Technologies as private players in water supply and treatment within Harare.

The letter that Mafume is alleged to have refused to accept states that the beleaguered city council is contravening laws such as the Urban Councils Act.

“We write to remind the City of Harare that the policy decision on designating urban local authorities as Water Services Authorities who can engage a Water Service Provider as contained in paragraph 1.3.2 of the 2013 Zimbabwe National Water Policy is subjected to a review of the Urban Councils Act(Chapter 29:15). The policy is explicitly clear that ‘power and authority to enter into contractual agreements with Water Services Provider’ if the local authority is not supplying water, is subject to the condition of a revised Urban Councils Act. Without that revision, the power and authority of the City of Harare to enter into such agreements are not there,” the organisation queried.

Last week on Friday,Community Water Alliance national coordinator Hardlife Mudzingwa blasted Harare and Bulawayo’s proposed water privatisation deals arguing that these will not improve water supply warning residents not to be hoodwinked.

Under the Harare water privatisation deal, there is going to be installation of pre-paid water meters for 250 000 households at a whooping cost of $107 million.

“Interesting that the water privatisation deal will see the installation of 250 000 pre-paid water meters at some households in Harare as a pilot. However, the cost of these meters is $107 million and what is worrying is that they have a lifespan of 5 years.

“It is illogical that after every 5 years, you need such an amount to replace water meters,” Mudzingwa questioned.

He said what is disturbing is that a similar pilot project on pre-paid water meters in some households in Kuwadzana, Sunningdale and Westgate did not yield tangible results.
“The Harare City once piloted pre-paid water meters but the beneficiaries felt short-changed as these never worked to their satisfaction and chances are high that under the proposed deal this will suffer the same fate,” added the water rights activist.

Mudzingwa made a clarion call for residents and other stakeholders to resist the move which has since garnered support from the local government ministry.

Harare Mayor Mafume is being accused of bulldozing the deal without buy-in from many councillors who felt the deal would not benefit residents.