500 million litres of raw sewage spill into water source
The country and virtually all its institutions have virtually gone down because of the economic and social turmoil precipitated by the Robert Mugabe led government's decision to seize mostly white owned commercial farms.
The town's treasury has no foreign currency to purchase equipment and chemicals for use in its sewage treatment. This has seen workers in the department opening up manhole pipes to release raw sewage into trenches which eventually reach Manyame dam, possibly contaminating the city's surface waters.
However the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) the responsible water authority in meting out its fine of Zim$100 million (US$10 000) on the council said: 'The volumes of the effluent discharged into Manyame are huge and the illegal and unprotected trench poses a great hazard to the health of people living (near the area)."
A representative of the authority also said the country's laws make it is a grave 'offence for anyone to discharge any organic or inorganic matter, including water containing sewage into a public stream,' he reportedly said.
The residents' plight is exacerbated by a non-existent civic culture which means the town authorities can get away with pollution of this magnitude.
"This country's legislation allows all the people affected by the sewer bursts to sue the council because they are paying their rates. They (the town authorities) should have moved people affected by the burst off their homes and found them temporary places to stay away from this unhealthy environment," a resident is quoted as saying in the state daily.
Investigations by the authority reveal that 500 million liters of human effluent have found their way into the surface waters of the dam over a period of three months. Further investigations revealed that the whole sewerage system for the town had collapsed.
The falling apart of the system has created the possibility of a health hazard as streams of raw sewage snake their way through the streets of the third mostly densely populated city in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe has one of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world and can ill-afford a Cholera outbreak.
The authority's water quality control division has rated the level of pollution by the town as highly hazardous thus deserving of a red classification.
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