Helcraw pledges to end Harare’s water woes by 2030

By Caleb Chikwawawa

Helcraw Electrical Private Limited, owned by prominent businessman and Zanu PF legislator Farai Jere, has pledged to end Harare’s perennial water supply challenges by 2030 through implementing a slew of initiatives tailored to restore life in the city’s tired infrastructure.

Company CEO Brendon Jere told Harare Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution, Charles Tavengwa during a tour of Morton Jaffray Water Works on Tuesday that the Southerton based firm has put plans to rehabilitate the water treatment plant’s infrastructure through replacement of worn-out pipes an related projects.

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“Our project is mostly divided in three parts,” Jere said.

“The first part is that we are going to rehabilitate Morton Jaffray from its current capacity of 350 mld to about 500 mld.”

Morton Jaffray has been facing challenges of pollution as Lake Chivero is ranked among Zimbabwe’s most polluted water bodies, largely due to sewage discharge and industrial waste.

This has increased treatment complexity and chemical costs, low capacity constraint as it is designed for a smaller population 200,000. It now serves over 4 million people, leading to supply-demand gaps.

“We are going to improve the infrastructure at Morton Jaffray,” Jere said.

“We are also going to solve the distribution network.

“You can see a lot of pipes here and some are in the warehouse. We are going to fix the base pipes, we are going to replace them to address issues of non-revenue water.

“For the third part of our project, we are going to change the existing post-paid metres into prepaid water metres and at the moment, we already have servers and DCUs that we have and on the 15th October, we are expecting to receive the metres so that we can commence our work.

“The installation of metres is going to be done strategically. We are not going to put metres in areas that are not receiving any water. We are only going to target the areas that are receiving water.

“You are going to see water coming out of areas that haven’t received water at all. By 2030, you need to ensure that you receive portable water by every door step,” said Jere.

Helcraw secured a US$138 million contract to upgrade Harare’s water infrastructure, including prepaid water metres and rehabilitation work.

Harare has been grappling with a water crisis that has seen some of its suburbs go for years without receiving any supplies.

Residents’ groups blame the crisis on the city’s obsolete infrastructure and failure by both city authorities and central government to put in place substantive measures to end the mess.

The city’s water problems have escalated to a point of outbreaks of waterborne diseases such as typhoid and cholera as desperate residents turn to unhygienic sources to obtain the necessity.