Abigail Mzimbawakhe (Midlands Correspondent)
The water crisis in Gweru will soon be addressed as the Gweru City Council (GCC) received pumps on Tuesday that will help to pump raw water from Ampongokwe Dam.
Ampongokwe Dam is almost 65% full so it will be able to provide adequate raw water that will provide most of the areas in the City of Progress with the precious liquid.
Gwenhoro Dam which has been supplying Gweru is less than 12% full which means it has few weeks of water supply left.
City Engineer, Robson Manatsa said that the pumps will enable Gweru to have adequate raw water that will be pumped into the Gwenhoro Treatment Plant.
“The pumps will help the city to get sufficient water as we will be having adequate raw water from Amapongokwe dam into our Gwenhoro Treatment Plant. The installation of the pumps will also help us to move from the strict water rationing that we are currently having,” said Engineer Manatsa.
Engineer Manatsa added that if the council does not face any challenge the pumps will soon be installed.
“We are expecting the installation of the pumps to take a week or just two weeks if there are no other major challenges that we might face. The total cost of the pumps was 6,5 million Rands. The supplier agent is in South Africa so the government paid directly to South Africa,” said Engineer Manatsa.
The City of Gweru received four pumps and each pump is 500 cubic meters per hour. The pumps will be able to push 60 mega litres of raw water into the Gwenhoro Treatment Plant. Pumps from Gwenhoro will push about 45 megal itres to the city as four out of nine pumps are currently working.
Engineer Manatsa said council was operating on one raw water pump instead of five so the four pumps that they received will help to solve the major problem of accessing water from Amapongokwe dam.