Mutomba, who looks after four grandchildren orphaned as a result of the HIV/AIDS disease, is partially blind and sometimes her eyes can be totally blind but has to face the reality of having to look for her grandchildren.

The eldest of the four is a girl aged 9 who despite her tender age take it upon herself to help her grandmother with some household chores among them, fetching water from almost five kilometers away from home.

The Mutomba household ordeal is just but one of the families so deprived of one of life’s basics namely water by the government of Zimbabwe with the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA) claiming they are not in charge of the local authority water while the local authorities say it is ZINWA with the responsibility of supplying water to the residents of Zimbabwe.

The situation has left the residents of Chitungwiza without an option but rather to dig their own wells and protect them by building around them with bricks so that they won’t collapse.

“We have to build our own wells here after realizing that the authorities were taking long to respond to our plight, however it is not all that easy to mobilize resources to secure a well as it involves a lot of things that need to be bought,” said Simon Jack, a resident of Chitungwiza.

Sitting on pins and needles

Another resident Lucia Mutero however said the absence of running water in Chitungwiza was causing problems to the residents of the small town adding that those without wells at their homesteads would have to pay to fetch water from other people’s wells.

“Some of us don’t afford the cost of drilling and building a well and we are left with no option than having to go and fetch from others’ wells where we are in some instances charged a fee,” said Mutero.

Carlos Chofamba, a community health worker in the area said the absence of running water in the area was contributing to the upsurge of water bone diseases like cholera and typhoid in the area.

“Chitungwiza is one of the towns in Zimbabwe hard hit by the cholera outbreak during 2008 chiefly because it does not have clean water sources. The fact that people are being made to pay for fetching water from wells results in the people having no option but to fetch the water from unprotected sources,” said Chofamba.

A ZINWA official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the water problem in Chitungwiza had been inherited from the past Mugabe administration which was marred by corruption, and mal-governance.

“These problems have always been there since Mugabe’s government was in power. We tried to seek the intervention of the Ministry of Water but the response was that of an authority that had nothing to offer to its citizenry,” the official said.

Meanwhile the Minister of Water, Sipepa Nkomo says the water crisis in Chitungwiza will need long term interventions as the town has suddenly witnessed an upsurge in population.

“The town’s reticulation system was not designed for a lot of people as is the situation today in Chitungwiza, the town was small and it is growing without necessarily improving the water and sewer systems and this is causing the pipes to burst while the water pump is being overloaded,” said Nkomo.

In Chitungwiza, raw sewage flowing along the streets is the order of the day while the availability of running water makes headlines in the town.