|
Back to Index
Harare's
water safe to drink
The
Daily Mirror (Zimbabwe)
March 01, 2006
http://www.zimmirror.co.zw/daily/index.cfm?
Last month,
some commissioners running the affairs of the municipality took
to task senior council officials over the city’s water quality during
a meeting following concerns by residents and other corporate bodies
that the water was unsafe for human consumption.
According to
minutes of the city’s Education, Health, Housing and Community Services
and Licensing Committee meeting held last month, the acting director
of Health Services, Stanley Mungofa, said the water was being sent
for tests to various laboratories weekly.
"The acting
director of Health Services verbally reported that his department
was sending water samples to different laboratories on a weekly
basis and according to the results received from the government
laboratory, the water was safe and met the World Health Organisation
standards," read the minutes.
The committee
then instructed Mungofa to regularly update them on the quality
of the city’s water.
Harare adopted
a number of measures aimed at improving the quality of water distributed
to residents following an outbreak of cholera in the capital which
claimed many lives.
This include
sampling and testing the quality daily by the Quality Assurance
Section, submission of results to the Ministry of Local Government,
Public Works and Urban Development, Ministry of Health and Child
Welfare, the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) and the commission.
The city’s chief
chemist has also been seconded to Zinwa, who are responsible for
bulk water management, recruitment of specialists and cleaning water
reservoirs.
Harare’s raw
water is polluted by affluent released by industry and raw sewage
released by council into the water bodies that have seen Zinwa requiring
eight different chemicals to purify the water.
Shortages of
foreign currency had, however, affected the availability of the
treatment chemicals.
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
|
