Harare continues to lose treated water through pipe bursts, leaks

Image: ZTNnews

With reports suggesting that the Harare City Council is losing more than 65 percent of its treated water through leaks, and pipe bursts due to ageing pipes and increased vandalism, the city seems to be failing to find a lasting solution.

Sometime in 2020, the city embarked on a pipe replacement exercise, but it seems more still need to be done to curb the loss of treated water.

For years, the city’s water supply has remained depressed owing to low deliveries of water treatment chemicals and the local authority is treating limited amounts of water to stretch the available chemicals.

However, a major challenge facing the local authority is the high level of treated water losses, which affects the financial viability as the water fails to reach intended destinations where it metered and paid for.

This translates into money lost for both the city council and the ratepayers, whose cost is meant to haunt at a later date.

Meanwhile, ZTNnews reports that liters of treated water are gushing from a burst water pipe in Avondale, adding that at the time the image was captured, there was no sign of rectifying the problem.

-Zwnews