HARARE, ARMSTERDAM – “Ichokwadi mabhonzo, tinomaona achiwira mugomba ratinenge tichichera mvura” said one woman who was at the well.
In the heart of Harare South, in an area known as Amsterdam, a community faces an unsettling and dangerous reality as residents are drinking water from wells dug in cemeteries.
With no other reliable water sources, these makeshift wells have become the community’s only option, despite the grim conditions surrounding them.
Amsterdam is one of the many informal settlements around Harare where basic services like clean water, sanitation, and infrastructure are sorely lacking.
Residents have resorted to using shallow wells, many of which are dug within or near cemeteries, as a result of the ongoing water crisis that has plagued Zimbabwe’s urban areas for years.
With no piped water and public boreholes often running dry, the people of Amsterdam find themselves with little choice but to depend on these contaminated sources.
What makes the situation even more alarming is that, on occasion, burial clothes and other debris from graves have been found in the wells.
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“Ichokwadi mabhonzo, tinomaona achiwira mugomba ratinenge tichichera mvura” said one woman who was at the well.
This proximity to human remains raises serious health concerns, as it increases the risk of contamination by bacteria and pathogens that could lead to life-threatening diseases.
Yet, despite these risks, the residents continue to use the water because they have no alternatives.
“Tine shuviro yekuti dai hurumende tatiwanisawo mvura, nekuti now mvura tiri kuiwana muno mumakuva, mvura totomanikidzwa kuinwa nekuti hapana kumwe kwatingaiwane” saod the woman who refused to be named.
“We are fully aware that the water we are drinking is unsafe,” one local resident admitted, “but we don’t have any other options. The city council has not provided us with clean water, and we can not afford to buy bottled water every day.”
This grave issue underscores the broader water crisis in Harare, where decades of underinvestment in public infrastructure, combined with rapid urbanization, have left many communities without access to clean, safe drinking water.
Efforts to address the water crisis have been slow-moving. While some NGOs have worked to provide boreholes or water purification tablets in certain parts of Armsterdam, these interventions have not yet solved Amsterdam crisis with estimatedly 5000 families still in need of water.
“We appeal to the government and local authorities to help us,” pleaded another resident. “We can not continue living like this. We are drinking from wells that are contaminated with the dead.
Steven Maendaenda, Zanu Pf councillor who lost to opposition councillor, slammed the current councillor of the area, arguing that he does not work and he is leaving people who voted him into to power to suffer.
” I am not the councillor, but i have looked for the donor and we started this program in 2014 and so far we have erected three boreholes but still we are in dire need of water in the area.” said Maendaenda.
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