(HERALD) Kunzvi Dam contractors put together funds

Kunzvi Dam contractors put together funds
Monday, 24 October 2011 00:00

PRIVATE contractors engaged by Government last year to construct Kunzvi Dam and its associated waterworks and pipeline have almost finished putting together the funds, a Cabinet minister has said.

The Zimbabwe Government concluded a US$370 million Public-Private Partnership last December with a consortium of local, regional and international companies to construct the dam, which should ease Harare's water shortages and balance the supplies since Kunzvi water will enter the city in the northeast, the area furthest from the present entry points in the south west and south.

A special purpose vehicle, Kunzvi Water Development Corporation was established to implement the project under a Build-Operate-Transfer arrangement.

The corporation includes Government, Locan Holdings, Swede Water Limited, Okada Group from Nigeria and Vince Group of France.

Bigen Africa Consulting Engineers, BKS Group and Dycon from South Africa are the technical partners.

The engineering and financial advisory team consists of CBZ Bank Limited, Brian Colquhoun, SDP Africa, Deloitte and Finesse Financial Services.

Water Resources Development and Management Minister Samuel Sipepa Nkomo said progress in pulling together financial resources had been made.

"Contrary to reports that contractors had pulled out, we are still in discussions with the same people we were talking to last year. No one has pulled out," he said.
"We are satisfied that progress is there. They are almost there with regards to putting together their funding."

Minister Nkomo however, could not give timelines on when construction would begin since there were still issues that needed to be sorted out.

"Besides the funding issue, there are other major things we have to solve before construction can begin. We have to resolve the distribution of the water for Harare, Chitungwiza and Norton," he said.

The project is estimated to cost at least US$370 million, of which US$70 million is for the construction of the dam and the other US$300 million for pump stations, reservoirs, water treatment works, conveyance and connections to the existing City of Harare network.

The Kunzvi Dam site is located 67km north east of Harare near Juru Growth Point damming the Nyaguwi River.

Plans to construct Kunzvi Dam, which when complete will carry 158.4 million cubic metres and produce 250 000 cubic metres of water daily, were mooted 30 years ago but have been hampered by lack of funding.

While Harare, thanks to recycling of treated waste water back to its supply dams, has enjoyed adequate raw water supplies for several years now, the treatment works, last extended in the early 1990s, are inadequate to supply the city and its satellite towns at full demand.

A second major deficiency has been the fact that treated water has to be pumped uphill to the city, with the pipelines entering the city in the south-west.
Shortages have usually meant that those areas furthest from the entry point, the north-eastern, eastern and northern suburbs, are short most of the time.

The west-east pipeline is inadequate to move enough water across the city, even if the Morton Jaffray Waterworks could supply enough.

The Kunzvi Dam and waterworks will not only be on an entirely different river system to the Manyame River, the present source of all city water, but will be on the opposite side of the city to the main Manyame dams.

With the Kunzvi works operational, city water managers will have more than 700 000 cubic metres a day to supply consumers, with the main pipelines entering the city to the south-west and north-east.

This will allow both better supplies and easier supplies, since the double entry points should reduce the amount of intermediate pumping required to reach any suburb.

Planners have stressed in the past that the city and its surrounding towns will continue to have an integrated supply network, so that in an emergency all areas can receive at least partial supplies from just one of the main pipelines, and that all available treated water will be regarded as belonging to a single pool.

But the engineering problems will be considerably easier to solve when water is fed into the extreme opposite ends of the city from two major sources. --- New Ziana, Herald Reporter.