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Rudo Muchedzi

A parliamentary joint thematic committee fact finding visit to Morton Jaffray water treatment plant in Harare today revealed that the city council is facing a critical shortage of chemicals needed for water treatment due to lack of funding.

Speaking on the sidelines of the tour of the Parliamentary Joint Thematic Committee on Human Rights, Sustainable Development Goals and Gender and Development, Harare’s acting director of Water Works Engineer Mabhena Moyo said that water supply has gone down from about 400 mega litres produced last year to about 160 mega litres per day due to lack of chemicals.

“We have a serious challenge with securing enough chemicals to treat water and that is hampering water supply.

“The plant has a capacity of about 704 mega litres against the 1 200 mega litres needed per day. Out of that, we are only utilising 160 mega litres per day due to lack of chemicals. We import chemicals from various suppliers and sometimes we end up incurring debts.

“The rehabilitation of Morton Jaffray plant is also running on low note as the water tariffs have not been rev