Bulawayo City Council has approached the Africa Development Bank (AFDB) for a US$10 million loan to rehabilitate its sewer and water systems.
This was revealed by town clerk Christopher Dube on Thursday during a media briefing. NewsDay Zimbabwe’s Patricia Sibanda quotes him as saying:
The amount which was supposed to be given to us by the AFDB as a grant was supposed to be US$34 million and US$4 million was supposed to be a contribution either from the government or ourselves as council.
There was certain work to be done, but those works were not done because there were some variations as a result of COVID lockdowns. For instance, in terms of the water and sewer mains renewals, we were supposed to do a lot. I am not quite sure about the statistics, but maybe it was about 47km and we did quite less than that.
Then it is this difference, this variance which we applied to government and AFDB to say can you make the money available to do the works that were not done because of variations and we applied for US$10 million, but if we were to be given any excess above that it will be a welcome development.
Bulawayo has had water challenges for many years and the situation has been worsening over the years.