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Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
Harare City Council is engaging various partners and investors, as well as Government, to structure facilities for the city’s pipe replacement programme which is expected to cost $850 million.

In an interview, Acting Town Clerk Engineer Hosiah Chisango said the city’s water transmission and distribution network was aged, with some pipes now over 60 years and could no longer support the required pressure.

“Our current assessment puts the capital requirement for the replacement and upgrading of pipes around the city at around $850 million over the next five years,” he said. “This will see progressive reduction of non-revenue water.

“If we were to start with, say, $200 million, we will then be able to build more capacity to re-invest in the rehabilitation as we reduce the non-revenue water.”

As part of strengthening and optimising the distribution network, the city commissioned a study to evaluate and remodel the water distribution network. The study is now complete and recommendations of the same are already being implemented.

Harare is losing more than 50 percent of its treated water through water leaks, illegal water connections and non-functional meters, while it uses $2,5 million per month to treat water.

The improvement in water supply following the rehabilitation of Morton Jaffray Waterworks has also piled pressure on the ageing pipes.

An audit by the city in 2016 showed that non-revenue water had increased by 52 percent from 36 million cubic metres during the first half of 2015 to 55 million cubic metres in 2016.

The network is failing in most cases due to age, corrosion and pressure and there are cases where contractors around the city also damage pipes. At least 9 000 pipe bursts are reported annually in the network.

From the 5 500km of pipe network, the city says if it deals with between 2 500km and 3 000km then Harare would have a system that has integrity. Last year, the city overhauled 110km of its ageing water reticulation system at a cost of $23 million.

Harare secured $20 million from the Zimbabwe Multi-Donor Trust Fund for the project, while it also pumped in $3 million.