A WATER crisis has crippled the operations of Ingutsheni Mental Hospital in Bulawayo amid revelations authorities at the mental health institution have engaged Mpilo Central Hospital for cooking services for the inmates.
Ingutsheni Hospital has been battling water challenges for years and efforts to repair broken down boreholes and drilling new ones have not been successful.
The institution has decided to purchase a water treatment plant worth US$17 000 to address its challenges. However, the project has been stalled by lack of funds.
Ingutsheni Hospital chief medical officer, Nemache Mawere on Monday revealed the dire situation at the institution when Bulawayo Citizens Coalition for Change legislators donated food to the institution.
Mawere listed a cocktail of problems to the Members of Parliament (MPs) who paid a surprise visit to the institution to donate 13 bags of rice.
“Our challenge is that we don’t charge user fees, so you can imagine the situation. We have challenges with water, there is no water so because of that we have to cook at Mpilo Hospital and transport the food this side,” he said.
The crisis has been ongoing for the past two week, Mawere said, adding that a water treatment plant was the panacea to the challenges since the available water could not sustain the operations of all departments.
“We have almost eight boreholes here, which we spent the whole of last year repairing, but now the problem is that the municipality says we cannot put borehole water in its pipes feeding our facilities, so under that instruction, we cannot do anything hence we have to get a water treatment plant,” Mawere said.
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“We tried to get quotations out there, they do not want our ZiG, they want US$17 000 to install the water treatment plant, after all the work we did on boreholes, we came back to zero, the water was meant to fix all our problems.”
Mawere said a Good Samaritan donated two jojo tanks which would be filled with city council water for kitchen use.
“We have 10 000-litre tanks which do not have water, they are supposed to be filled with council water, when we get the water, we let it run in and use it for laundry and the kitchen, then the wards will rely on borehole water, which people are getting from the taps, but you know you get tired of going up and down,” Mawere said.
Entumbane constituency MP, Prince Dube, Lobengula-Magwegwe MP, Tendai Nyathi, Nkulumane-Nketa MP, Desire Moyo; Proportional representation MPs, Lungile Ncube, Nomvula Mguni and Sikhuphukile Dube promised to help in resolving the situation faced by the institution saying they will budget in US dollars and not in local currency.
“This is the argument that MPs were saying to the Minister of Finance, budget in US dollar, because this ZiG will not work,” Mguni said.
Nyathi said the money needed was not much, hence they would take the issue to Parliament.
“But I think US$17 000 is not a lot of money, if we can have that quotation together with the notion that we have, if we raise this in Parliament, they will be shy [sic],” Nyathi said.
