Back to Index

Keynote speech by the Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai at the Harare Metropolitan Water Summit
Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai
March 30, 2012

Deputy Prime Minister, Thokozani Khupe,

The Minister of Water Resources, Development and Management, Hon. Sipepa Nkomo

Cabinet Ministers here present,

His Worship, The Mayor of Harare, Muchadeyi Masunda,

Invited Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen

I am greatly honoured to address this important gathering of stakeholders at the Harare Metropolitan Water Summit because water is the driving force of all nature.

We meet here today a week after the commemoration of the World Water Day, an international day to celebrate freshwater. The International World Water Day is held annually on the 22nd of March as a means of focusing attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources. Each year, World Water Day highlights a specific aspect of freshwater.

The theme of this year's World Water Day is Water and Food Security.

The United Nations estimates that there are 7 billion people to feed on the planet today and another 2 billion are expected to join by 2050. Statistics say that each of us drinks from 2 to 4 litres of water every day and that is why they say our bodies are molded rivers!

In marking the World Water Day, UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, said over the coming decades, feeding a growing global population and ensuring food and nutrition security for all will depend on increasing food production. This, in turn, means ensuring the sustainable use of our most critical finite resource - water.

Ladies and Gentlemen, when we talk water, we are talking of agriculture, food security, famine, and political stability. Unless we increase our capacity to use water wisely in agriculture, we will fail to end hunger and we will open the door to a range of other ills, including drought, famine and political instability.

The need to guarantee food security through the provision of adequate fresh water influences the objectives for the Harare Metropolitan Water Summit, which include but are not limited to the provision of adequate potable water, eradication of water related diseases, treatment of all wastewater to acceptable standards and sustainable re-investment into the water and wastewater infrastructure as revenue collection is optimised, among many others.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the right to drinking water and sanitation is a recognised human right.

In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Council recognised the right to access drinking water and sanitation as a human right on the same footing as other social rights such as the right to food and the right to health.

Despite this international recognition, there is still much to be done: every ten minutes, ten people including four children die of diseases directly related to water. The time has come for the right to water and sanitation be put into effect.

It pains me to note that there has been little or no significant investment in water and wastewater infrastructure over the past 30 years. The existing water and wastewater infrastructure countrywide is beyond its design life. No significant upgrade and rehabilitation have been done to improve the quality of water and to optimise water supply and sewage treatment. This has compromised the provision of safe water to the people, mostly to Harare residents.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that today some 1.6 billion people live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity and by 2025 two-thirds of the world's population could be living under water stressed conditions.

One primary reason for this is the necessary use of water for food production. As mentioned earlier, the average human drinks 2 to 4 litres of water every day, but it takes 2 000 to 5 000 litres of water to produce one person's daily food.

These statistics call us to seriously look into our infrastructure to mitigate the effects of high demand for fresh water due to rising rural, urban migration and general population growth.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Harare Metropolitan Water Summit, is a forum for us to formulate and strategise short, medium and long-term solutions to the water problems bedeviling Harare.

That the City of Harare has managed to reinstate water supplies to areas such as Mabvuku which had gone for months, if not years, without water is a positive indicator that the current challenges are not insurmountable.

Here amongst us are leaders in Government, the private sector, development partners and civic organizations who can help find lasting solutions to these challenges if we all work together.

Working together means that we plan together, develop strategies and implement together. As leaders we must lead by example. By this I mean that we must take the initiative to encourage demand side management for water: let us conserve water.

Secondly we must pay our bills. Refusal to pay for services provided is not different from economic sabotage. Zimbabwe's power sector has been seriously compromised by the big chefs' failure and outright refusal to pay their electricity bills.

This cancer has however spread to almost all sectors of the economy. I am aware of the huge water bills run by ministers and senior Government officials. The worrying trend is that most of those who are refusing to honour electricity bills also owe several thousands to Zinwa and local councils.

They refuse to pay for water at their farms and their houses, owing huge sums of money running into several hundreds of thousands, they refuse to pay for electricity and they refuse to pay for literally anything. They have institutionalised looting, but our society will not accept this.

It is a syndicate of economic saboteurs, a web of corruption which we must nip in the bud.

The hullabaloo about bills having been released to the public and questions of client confidentiality is much ado about nothing. It is hiding behind the finger. Pay your bills and you will save the country.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am appalled by those in high offices' penchant for free goods despite their opulence voluntarily displayed in a poor country such as ours.

The sad thing is where an old widow, who is looking after several orphans has her electricity and water disconnected for arrears of just as little as $30, the big chefs enjoy these services all the time but still refuse to pay up.

Load-shedding and water cuts are being forced on the people yet they are paying their bills. We cannot continue with a situation where the poor are subsidising the rich elite who include Cabinet ministers. Zimbabwe is for us all and therefore let us all play our part.

Local authorities and parastatals are in need of funds to recapitalise and improve service delivery but cannot succeed when we have some in high offices refusing to pay for services rendered. I trust everyone in arrears pays up. Some of them are harvesting their tobacco and we urge ZESA and local authorities to garnish amounts owed to them from their huge payouts.

Water and sanitation are now recognized as a human right. Because water sustains life, is necessary for meeting reproductive roles (domestic chores, drinking) productive roles such as livelihoods, community management when there are gatherings and funerals there has been much attention towards infrastructure development.

This water summit must also come up with strategies to help local authorities, particularly Harare, to collect revenues owed to ensure improved liquidity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I now take this opportunity to officially launch the Harare Public Awareness and Water Conservation Campaign, which the City of Harare crafted with the support of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA).

The City of Harare and its development partners will take this to the residents to induce a change in our water usage habits towards increased efficiency. It is encouraging to note that pilot projects carried out in Dzivaresekwa had positive results.

If you save water, you have saved the nation.

I thank you.

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP