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Ishemunyoro Chingwere Property Reporter
THE City of Harare will have its water distribution control equipment automated with state of the art remote control equipment as part of efforts to improve distribution efficiency to water consumers, under a $36 million donor facility managed by the African Development Bank (AFDB).

The fund will also see three more local authorities, Chitungwiza, Ruwa and Redcliff having their water reticulation and distribution facilities revamped to meet the demands of their growing populations.

The programme; Urgent Water Supply and Sanitation Rehabilitation Project, is a follow up to another one done through AFDB which was done from 2011 to 2014 at a total cost of $43,6 million as a way of helping local authorities mitigate the challenges that cause water borne diseases.

The project is now moving to phase two and will see Harare getting $21 million of the allocated budget while the remaining $15 million will be shared among the three local authorities of Chitungwiza, Ruwa and Redcliff.

In an interview with The Herald Property Guide, ZimFund — which manages the project on behalf of AFDB — said work on the project commenced in September last year and is expected to be finished by December this year with a few mop up operations scheduled to spill into 2019.

“Basically what we are doing is to follow up on the water projects we did under phase 1 at a cost of $43,6 million,” said ZimFund manager Emmanuel Nzabanita.

“Our emphasis on the current project is to work on the smooth collection of sewage from homes to treatment plants as well as deliver water to people’s homes.

“Harare — naturally because it’s a bigger city and has had problems — will get the large chunk of the budget which will see us spending $21 million on their system,” he said.

Mr Nzabanita said in addition to working on the already existing infrastructure to boost efficiency, the project will see them installing automated equipment for Harare that will reduce the time that the City was spending running around to collect data and auctioning on it from its distribution centres.

He said for a City of Harare’s size with a breadth of over 40km having operators shuttling from one end to the other is laborious. The system, he said, is already in use in first world cities as opposed to physically running around distribution centres, a situation which he said always results in failure to timeously relay information as well as act on it.

“In addition also, in order for better operation and control, we will provide them (Harare City) with remote control equipment in the form of telemetry and scada (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) equipment, that will help the municipality to be able to interact with their water distribution system, from one control centre.

“It’s already work in progress, the contract has already been awarded and we expect the rest of the equipment to arrive in the country very soon and be installed,” he said.