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Rumbidzayi Zinyuke
Manicaland Bureau
Buhera Rural District Council is planning to use its next allocation of devolution funds to improve water supply in the district.

Buhera has been facing serious water shortages due to successive droughts experienced in the country during the past three seasons.

Buhera RDC chairman Mr Ngoni Musakaruka said the authority had so far received a total of $12,4 million from Government, which has been channelled towards recapitalising council to improve service delivery.

He said they had so far set aside $3 million received this year and will use some of the funds that will be released to the local authority from next year for the water project.

“Buhera is a very dry area and the current water situation is not so good because of the drought,” said Mr Musakaruka.

“The water table is very low and most boreholes now have no water. You see long queues of people waiting to get water, which is why we are talking of increasing the number of boreholes and even deepening the available ones.

“Most of them are old boreholes that were only drilled up to 40 metres, but we now need to deepen them to 100 metres so that we can access good water.”

Mr Musakaruka said the council had already set aside the $3 million received this year to install pumping facilities for five boreholes that were sunk in Buhera South.

He said once water was available, the RDC would look into enhancing livelihoods of communities through nutrition gardens.

“We want to look at how best we can improve our people’s lives by pumping our community boreholes using solar and the establishment of community gardens,” said Mr Musakaruka.