Gokwe falls under a deadly water crisis

Gokwe(ZimEye)-A serious water crisis has hit the growing Gokwe cotton farming town with residents resorting to fetching water from shallow wells, water flowing under bridges and broken water pipes exposing them to health hazards.
Residents of Mapfungautsi, Nyaradza, and Sasame high density suburbs wake up midnight daily to queue at a few water tapes that produce water with the rest resorting to dig shallow wells in the nearby wetland for drinking and other domestic use.

“We find the water we get from the wells we dig (zvitubu) safer to drink than fetching from Sasame river, because of it’s sewerage contamination,” said Sarudzai Muropa of Nyaradza.



“We are taking advantage of this broken pipe which leaks clean water ,but the problem is that because of its proximity to the main road, there is high risk of being crushed by cars.,” a woman identified as Mai Tasara of Sasame said while fetching water underneath a bridge using a cup.

Petronela Kanengoni of Mapfungautsi said for the past two years her tape had not been producing a drop of water.

‘What we do here is that we wake up at around midnight and queue at our neighbour’s tape which produces some drops during the night. We used to get drinking water from a borehole which was drilled by UNICEF during the height of Cholera two years ago but the borehole broke down because of pressure from the Mapfungautsi and Sasame residents,” she said.

Gokwe uses water drawn from a borehole and because of regular power cuts experienced here, the machine is always off.

Gokwe town council chair (MDC-T} Darlington Mudondo said the town was in critical water shortage which could cause another cholera outbreak when the rainy season comes, if it was not addressed.

“We have a perennial water crisis here which we believe will be solved only by finishing up the construction of Gwehava dam whose process is still in progress, because the borehole which pumps water to the entire area is being affected by power cuts and pressure from the growing Gokwe population,” he said.


Gokwe water is still in the hands of the bankrupt Zimbabwe Water Authority (ZINWA) after the council and the water authority failed to reach a consensus over sewer and water hand over and take over. The problem remains unresolved to date making residents to believe that the misunderstanding was affecting service delivery.

Efforts to get a comment from ZINWA Gokwe were fruitless. (ZimEye, Zimbabwe)