The Sunday News
KWEKWE City Council and Redcliff Municipality are at loggerheads over proposals by the former to install bulk water meters which will see New Zimsteel and the municipality being billed separately for water charges.
New Zimsteel is billed by Kwekwe for water supplies to Redcliff since the steelmaker is the water authority in the dormitory town.
The steel manufacturer in turn bills Redcliff.
Since New Zimsteel has not been operational the water bill which is mainly attributed to Redcliff, has ballooned to $14 million, a situation which has prompted Kwekwe to install bulk water meters to bill New Zimsteel, Redcliff and other big customers in the satellite town such as Steelmakers and Zimbabwe Chemical Refineries (Zimchem) separately.
Kwekwe has already flighted a tender for the bulk water meters.
However, this has drawn the ire of Redcliff which argues that the municipality did not have infrastructure of its own to supply water to residents.
Water infrastructure in Redcliff is owned by the New Zimsteel.
Clr Fred Kapuya, the Redcliff Mayor, said the only way to wean council from New Zimsteel was to engage the steelmaker which owns the infrastructure.
“We’ve written to Kwekwe advising them that we need to engage New Zimsteel again because they own 90 percent of the water infrastructure so we cannot do without them in this arrangement.
“Again New Zimsteel has got the engineers and the pump station which pumps water to Redcliff is in the New Zimsteel premises. In such a scenario council workers would need a permit to go and inspect in the company premises in case there is a fault and those issues should be addressed before installation of water meters can be undertaken,” he said.
However, Kwekwe Mayor Clr Matenda Madzoke was adamant that the installation of bulk water meters would go ahead as Redcliff was taking advantage of the situation for not paying its water bills to Kwekwe City Council.
“It’s a very painful issue because Kwekwe residents are the ones who are now subsidising Redcliff since they (council) do not want to pay for water services. They are taking advantage of the wrangle between them and New Zimsteel as to who is the water authority.
“They are the ones who are billing people but they do not want to remit the money to us. Right now they have come up with a payment plan to pay us and we have gone a step further by proposing the installation of bulk water meters.
“We’ll go ahead with the project as we seek to boost our revenue base since the subsidising of water which we’ve been doing all along has strained our resources,” said Clr Madzoke.
The standoff has resulted in the two councils crossing swords when Kwekwe disconnected water supplies to the dormitory town which was only reconnected following the intervention of the then Local Government Minister, Dr Ignatius Chombo who directed Kwekwe to resume water supplies to its satellite town.
Clr Madzoke accused Redcliff of taking advantage of the minister’s directive.
Meanwhile, Kwekwe City Council has been dragged to court by Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) over a $1 million debt which has seen the local authority’s water being disconnected on several occasions after the two parties failed to reach a consensus.
“We were last year dragged to court by Zinwa over debt and the matter is before the courts,” said Clr Madzoke.
