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George Maponga  at  TOKWE-MURKOSI
Contractors at Tokwe-Murkosi have said the 400 million cubic metres of water that accumulated in the dam in the wake of heavy rains that fell in Masvingo will be drained to enable building of an impermeable concrete slab that will stop water from seeping through.
Speaking during a briefing to Acting President Joice Mujuru before she toured the dam wall on Wednesday, Zinwa resident engineer Mr Paul Dengu said only about 30 million cubic metres of water will remain in the coffer  dam.

Mr Dengu said it would take six weeks to drain the water in Tokwe-Murkosi Dam, adding that work on stabilising the wall that breached because of heavy rains was already underway.

“We will drain all the water so that we build a concrete slab which is impermeable to stop water from seeping through the wall and we think in six weeks we will be done,’’said Mr Dengu.

“A team of independent engineers inspected the dam and certified it safe, the foundation of the dam was declared strong enough and the dam wall is safe and we do not expect any problems with the wall from now on. At first even workers were afraid to work on the wall but everything is now okay.’’

The constructors were busy using front-end loaders and tippers to repair part of the dam wall that breached and Mr Dengu said an additional channel to drain water from the dam was almost complete.

“Reconstruction of the collapsed wall is going on well and we have also managed to raise the dam wall to about six metres away from the water,” he  said.

Mr Dengu told Acting President Mujuru that Tokwe-Murkosi contractors were initially working on the premise that the only 500 hectares of the flood basin would be under water during the current rain season, but heavy rains saw the area covered by water increasing to 2 600ha.

The situation endangered the families in the basin who were at risk of being flooded.