HARARE: The African Development Bank (AfDB) has approved a $53,24 million grant to fund water and sewer projects in Bulawayo, which will benefit over 400 000 residents in the country’s second largest city.
The grant was approved during AfDB’s executive directors meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, on Wednesday. The money will fund Bulawayo’s Water and Sewerage Services Improvement Project (BWSSIP) meant to improve its municipal water supply and sanitation services.
The project, which will be implemented in four years starting next month, will focus on rehabilitating and enhancing the water supply system, strengthening institutional capacity, enhancing service delivery and efficiency and improvement of environmental sanitation.
This will be achieved through targeted investment and intervention in critical aspects of the water and sanitation infrastructure, as well as relevant institutional and capacity building, by providing safe water and ensuring safe disposal of sewage, improving the efficiency of water and sanitation infrastructure and enhancing operational and financial efficiency of service delivery, AfDB said.
“Some of the key outcomes are improved household access to municipal water supply, reduced environmental pollution from raw sewage and improved utility efficiency,” AfDB said.
It said when completed, the project would benefit directly 471 798 people in Bulawayo. Of that number, 75 000 people would be those previously isolated from basic services.
“In terms of the sanitation intervention, the whole city will benefit from the rehabilitated public latrines, hygiene education and improved maintenance capacity, whereas the intervention on sewer reticulation and treatment works will benefit about 471 798 people living in the affected catchments, thus eliminating health hazard,” AfDB said. Bulawayo has been facing perennial water shortages, which have been attributed to increasing demand.
At the height of the crisis, the city was forced to introduce 96 hours of water rationing every week. The last dam to be built was commissioned in 1976. Since then, no dam has been built to correspond with the city’s increasing population.
AfDB said the BWSSIP project was anchored on the Updated Country Brief (2014-2016), through the emphasis for critical service delivery in the water and sanitation sector. It is also consistent with the ZimAsset, government’s blueprint for economic development, in which infrastructure and utilities are one of the four clusters of the plan.
“It is consistent to the bank’s engagement and role in Zimbabwe in reducing fragility and building resiliency through its capacity-building initiatives, improving government delivery of basic services, particularly to vulnerable groups, and facilitating and leading the country’s re-engagement process with the international community so as to improve development prospects. This is in complete alignment with the Bank’s Strategy for Enhanced Engagement in Fragile States,” AfDB said.
The total cost of the project is estimated at $37,075m. The bank’s $34,93m grant derived from Transition Support Facility represents 90% of the funding. Government will provide the balance.
