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Walter Mswazie Masvingo Correspondent
Masvingo City Council is working on completing the upgrading of the water reticulation facilities at Bushemead to improve the access of potable and clean water by residents and businesses in the city, an official has said. The Mayor, Councillor Collen Maboke, yesterday said they were working on modalities to get a US$60 000 loan from the China Export and Import Bank for the installation of a new pump under phase two of the water augmentation programme.

He said apart from the water augmentation programme they were looking at a number of capital projects to address service delivery gaps in the city.

“Depending on the availability of resources all the initiatives should be completed within 10 months. It is my hope that we all start this year with rejuvenated visions, great ideas for our families and communities,” said Clr Maboke.

“As we embark on this long journey, we strive to be accountable and transparent to the needs of the ratepayers, a mandate that the people of Masvingo bestowed on us. We have set our sights on finishing water augmentation project and install over 600 street solar lights, as our two major projects.”

He added: “We could not finish our planned capital projects due to unavailability of resources and we look forward to a change of fortunes this year. Let me hasten to say for this year, council has committed itself to ensure all residents have access to clean and safe drinking water.

“We learnt lot in the previous year and plans are already in motion to increase our pumping capacity to meet residents demand. We are a proactive council and we don’t anticipate a repeat of events experienced last year when residents went for a several weeks without access to water given the constant breakdowns at the main water plant.”

He said last year they managed to resurface a number of main roads in the city and they would continue from where they left off.

He said priority will be on rehabilitating more roads in the residential areas most of which were in a bad state.

Clr Maboke said they were also mobilising resources to accelerate the public lighting project.