Council Has Been Sitting on Water Chemical Tenders For Ten Months: Minister

By Takunda Mandura

The Minister of State for Harare Provincial Affairs, Senator Chidawu has accused Harare Council of spending over ten months with a pending water chemical tender endangering the lives of people.

The Senator accused the MDC Alliance led Council of failing to deal with the water crisis and has since challenged it to rectify the situation soon.

“Our only worry and interest as the Ministry is that there has been an inordinate delay in the completion of such a critical procurement process when Harare Province has a public emergency”.

“Surely a tender process that stretches from February to December 2019 whilst our residents our residents have little to no access to water is not reasonable”.

“The city officials responsible for the provision of water are clearly not taking our residents water woes and the potential hazards seriously”, he said.

Minister Chidawu deplored the Council for being crybabies constantly pointing accusatory fingers elsewhere and urged them to come up with solutions.

“It is not enough for Harare City Council to call for the declaration of the water situation in Harare as disaster by the government when the Council itself is not taking actions within its powers to avert the water crises”, he added.

Chidawu has since advised that the Council engage local chemical producers for the acquisition of water purification chemicals.

The move to acquire the chemicals from Chemplex, a government owned entity, is allegedly aimed at saving the scarce foreign currency.