Marondera Town Council is sitting on a ticking health time bomb after it emerged that the town is left with one week’s supply of water treatment chemicals.
Briefing Mashonaland East Provincial Minister, Apolonia Munzverengi during a tour of cholera treatment facilities at Marondera Provincial Hospital and sewer reticulation facilities, the town’s Engineer, Christopher Chinaka said council was failing to purchase chemicals due to foreign currency shortages.
“Chlorine which is the main disinfectant and aluminum sulphate which we use to kill bacteria is a major problem for us due to lack of foreign currency. We are in a dire situation as we speak,” he said.
Munzverengi said government and councils should work together to avert the spread of cholera by coming up with a way to deal with the water crisis
“We had what the Engineers said, some of the talk is to calm us down but with the volume of waste that we saw, we don’t know when this started. We are not aware of the contamination levels…It will not be surprising to hear that the current water being distributed into homes is also contaminated because these guys might not to say tell us and it will be a time bomb which will affect the people” said Munzverengi.
The town uses a daily average of 15 000 KGs of aluminium sulphate, 1 200 KGs of hydrated lime and 400 KGs of chlorine.
The water treatments plant has the potential to produce 13 mega litres per day is currently producing 9 000 mega litres of water against a daily demand of 29 000 mega litres.
The huge shortage is a threat to the spread of cholera which has killed more than 30 people while more 3000 have been affected.
Government has so far raised US$29 million dollars through crowd funding meant to go towards the fight against cholera.
