Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Africa Water, Sanitation Jan -Feb 2014 Vol.10 No1 | Page 9

NEWS in brief
According
to
Jessica Shelver,
spokesperson
for MEC for
Education
Debbie Schafer,
the
education
d e p a r t m e n t ’s
Hanging around, waiting for some toilets in Tembisa district director
gave permission
for the school to close earlier while the problems are fixed.
The past two days classes started at 8am, but an hour or
two later the children were sent home. Yesterday they were
told not to come to school until Friday.

Around Africa

construction at the school is scheduled to be completed
by May 2015. “We we are trying to build a state of the art
school on the premises,” she said.
A parent who identified herself as “Mrs Gaba” lives in the
same street as the school and has two children attending
it. She said she was not pleased by the strike but she
understands because of the bad situation at the school.
“My children complain all the time about toilets that they
don’t have at school and the younger one once came back
from school with a wet school bag that he dropped in the
sewage water,” she said.

Zimbabwe

School teacher and coordinator for safety, Xolile Platjies,
says the sewage water has been there since last year.

Mutare Loses Half Its Treated Water through
Leakages

“The kids cannot play in the yard anymore because they
always fall on that water. You can smell the unpleasant
scent even when you are in the classroom. The health of
these kids is at risk,” said Platjies.

The city of
Mutare
is
processing
enough water for
its residents but
about half of it
is lost through
burst
pipes
and leakages, a
council official
Water leakages in Mutare has said.

The current classrooms are prefabricated and when they
were provided the plan was that concrete classrooms
would be built at a later stage. The construction began in
2011 and stopped last year.
The school principal, Thobile Majingo, said he was not
informed that the construction would be stopped or the
reason for it. “I have never witnessed a construction
that takes four years to build a primary school, and the
worst part is that the construction just stopped without
informing any of the staff.”
Majingo, who took over as head of school in April 2014,
said there are not enough toilets for the number of kids
that are registered in the school. There are 1,220 students
using nine toilets. The current toilets are damaged and
currently not working.
“Teachers do not have toilets in the premises at all
and if they need to use a bathroom they have to leave
classrooms and drive to the nearest petrol station which in
unacceptable,” he said.
Shelver told GroundUp that a contractor visited the school
on Friday “to investigate the scope of work”. She said he
returned on Saturday to repair the ablutions, however the
septic tank was overflowing, and “he could not mitigate the
situation.” Shelver said that the blockage has been cleared
and there has been no spillage since yesterday. She said that
the Department of Public Works would be cleaning up the
existing spillage.
Shelver said that the teachers have had no toilet facilities
because of vandalism during the school holidays. The
education department has arranged for 23 chemical
toilets to be delivered to the school today. She said that

Town Clerk Obert Muzawazi said the council was failing
to replace obsolete pipes to minimize the losses due to
financial constraints.
“We are losing 52 percent of our purified water due to
leakages and pipe bursts,” said Muzawazi, adding that the
council was working round the clock to ensure that the
problem was minimized.
Mutare has a population of close to 400,000 and the city
is grappling with acute water shortages with areas such as
Dangamvura and Hobhouse having gone for years without
access to tap water.
According to the council’s finance department, close
to $13 million is needed for a complete overhaul of the
city’s water and sewer reticulation system which is now
overstretched by demand.
The council blames the collapse of a once vibrant industry
as a major cause of its financial challenges.
Mayor, Tawanda Nhamarare said the financial problems
had been worsened by the closure of companies such as
Mutare Board and Paper Mills, Cairns Foods, Quest and
PG Glass which were cash cows to the local authority.
He said most residents were unemployed and could not
pay their rates.

Africa Water, Sanitation & Hygiene • January - February 2015

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