By Jordan Davidson
The 2 million residents of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, and its surrounding areas found themselves without water on Monday and Tuesday when the authorities abruptly shut down the city’s main water treatment plant, raising fears of cholera outbreaks and other water-borne diseases, as the AP reported.
Zimbabwe’s crumbling economy has left the local government without enough money to import the necessary water treatment chemicals to allow the water to run. The Harare City Council deputy mayor Enock Mupamawonde told reporters that the local authority required 40 million Zimbabwe dollars a month ($2.7 million) for water chemicals — well short of the 15 million Zimbabwe dollars it collected in monthly revenue, as Reuters reported.
He said the money shortage meant the council had to close its Morton Jaffray treatment plant outside of Harare.
“It (the shutdown) is due to the non-availability of foreign currency…it is devastating, to say the least,” Mupamawonde told reporters as he urged President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government to declare the water crisis a national disaster, according to Reuters.
