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Nothing for us, without us
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
September 23, 2013

Recent media reports have indicated that Harare City Council intends to install pre-paid water meters and refurbish the Morton Jeffery waterworks to ease the City’s water shortages. Through the Afrexim Bank of China, the City has received a loan extension of $144m USD for these aforementioned projects to take place. The project is said to be aiming at increasing water production by 42% which translates to 640 mega litres of water a day. However, Harare needs 1400 mega litres especially in summer were water usage increases in general.

Despite the objective sounding progressive, CHRA maintains that the process by which certain decisions have been made at town house will compromise the goal. The $144m deal was fast tracked during the time when there were no councillors and this makes the whole deal unclear in terms of its transparency. We are informed that this deal was allegedly pushed under the auspices of the caretaker commission led by Alfred Tome in the absence of elected councillors. To have an unelected commission making decisions of that magnitude on behalf of residents leaves a lot to be desired. At first we understand that Council resolved to erect prepaid water meters. However, it does not suffice to postulate that pre-paid water meters will ease the water problems. It will only increase revenue generation in council which will only benefit the technocrats at the expense of service delivery. Secondly, to install prepaid water meters where there is no water makes no logical sense. This spells out that our water will be privatised which contravenes the constitution which makes water a basic human right.

In light of the above we maintain that City of Harare should address the following questions before embarking on inviting the Chinese to start business.

1. What’s the debt re-payment plan set for offsetting this debt? How much will residents contribute per year towards its servicing and how much is council going to contribute from their profits?

2. To hire 36 engineers is an insult to the thousands of qualified engineers we have in Zimbabwe. Can the City of Harare explain to us if they failed to find 36 engineers locally?

3. Why are they going to install pre-paid meters when some areas do not even have running water at all. What will the meter do to solve that problem?

4. Was there any consultation with residents on the following allocations: 44million for Morton Jeffery, 16 Million for the pump stations, 17 Million for the Firle and Crowborough sewer works, 4.5 million for I.C.T, 7 million for procurement of water chemicals, 1 million for laboratory equipment and 3 million for pressure reducing valves?

The residents of Harare will not accept privatisation of water and we will not be party to something that we are not consulted on. We will continue to monitor and track progress of these projects. We also demand that City of Harare creates feedback platforms with residents and involve us at each and every level of decision making. We reserve the right to dissociate ourselves from projects that are not informed by us and meant for our benefit hence it’s imperative for the City fathers to swiftly move in and update residents on the progress and account on expenditure of such a City-wide project.

Visit the CHRA fact sheet

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