Back to Index

Voices from community
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
May 23, 2013

Privatisation of water, an injury to the poor

Water is a crucial basic commodity to human life and it is the right of people to have water in its full capacity. Harare City Council has failed to provide it effectively since 2008 due to lack of investment in water infrastructure since independence. The connecting pipes from the main water treatment plant, Morton Jaffrey waterworks has leakages which lose more than 40% of treated water. Moreover, pollution levels are very high in Lake Chivero.

Following such a scenario, residents are forced to fetch the water from unprotected sources which make them vulnerable to diarrheal diseases such as cholera and typhoid which claimed thousands of people in 2008-2009. People had resorted to the drilling of boreholes and wells, which culminated in a situation in which those that could afford to drill boreholes, had access to clean water.

Privatisation of water has become the norm in Harare as those with wells, are now selling water. In Glenview 8, a resident complained that a 25 litre bucket of water is going for 50cents which is unaffordable considering the current urban growth rate which entails more numbers of people per household requiring water. Women are the most affected due to their gender roles thus; as a result at macro-level water becomes a scarce resource. The unemployed men are taking an advantage of the situation as they will spend a lot of time at boreholes fetching water in huge quantities to make more money. Now the majority of people are spending more than 6hours accessing just 20litres of water as water distributors take long to fill their drums in order for them to sell.

At micro – level, local authorities want to promote privatisation of water where the Ministry of Local Government wants distributors to be licenced. Harare City Council wants to test the water before it’s sold as a result this encourages private companies to sell clean expensive water in smaller amounts whilst Council provides bulk unclean water.

Visit the CHRA fact sheet

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