Source: Jairos Saunyama, NewsDay Zimbabwe
A HEALTH crisis is looming in Chitungwiza’s Manyame Park suburb in St Mary’s, where raw effluent is flowing from a burst sewer pipe that has been left unattended since last week, although the matter has been reported to the local authority.
On Friday, the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) visited the site and fined Chitungwiza Town Municipality $1 000 for failing to rehabilitate the clogged pond, which is discharging effluent into homes.
Ema’s Mashonaland East provincial spokesperson, Astas Mabwe, claimed that the raw effluent spillage was caused by a breakdown at council’s Manyame Park Pump Station three.
“As EMA, we are worried by the lack of urgency displayed by the municipality of Chitungwiza to repair both the sewage temporary holding pond and the broken pump in Manyame Park. The council was notified on January 16 when we carried out an inspection in the area, but nothing has been done to rectify the problem,” he said.
“As an agency, we are worried by this pollution that will lead to the spread of water-borne diseases to the people downstream as well as Manyame residents. We have issued the local authority with a ticket as penalty for discharging effluent into the environment.”
Efforts to get a comment from the local authority were fruitless yesterday.
Recently, a team of government ministers toured Mbare and Chitungwiza, where they called on local authorities to urgently attend to sewer and water pipe bursts following the outbreak of typhoid, which has claimed two lives and affected over 150 others, particularly in Harare.
Source: Jairos Saunyama, NewsDay Zimbabwe