Taps Run Dry in Malawian City as Floods Cripple Water Plant

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(Bloomberg) -- When floods crippled the main water plant supplying Blantyre, Malawi’s commercial capital, on Jan. 7, Florence Master was forced to draw water from the murky Chilobwe River. Three weeks later, her taps are still dry.
“I’ve been drinking water from this river since the day the floods hit,” Master, a 36-year-old mother of five, said as she balanced a bucket on her head. “We could understand if this was happening in villages, but to have people drink water from rivers in a city is unheard of.”
Days of torrential rain caused the Shire and Ruo rivers to burst their banks, unleashing floods that have claimed at least 176 lives and swamped the homes of about 200,000 people, according to the government. The misery has been compounded by the loss of potable water supplies to most of Blantyre, a city of about 900,000, and fears of a large-scale outbreak of cholera and other waterborne diseases.

Thousands of city residents spend their days walking the streets in search of drinking water, before eventually quenching their thirst from untreated rivers, swamps and boreholes because they can’t afford purification tablets or bottled water. About half of Malawi’s 16.4 million people live on less than $1.25 a day, data from the African Development Bank shows.
“We are drinking from an open well and we don’t know what has gone into it,” said John Naura, 45, who makes a living digging up sand from river banks and selling it to builders. “This water we are drinking is poison. Blantyre Water Board has said we should wait for two more weeks before water starts flowing from the taps, but have they sat down to think what people will be drinking within those two weeks?”
Hobbled Plant
Blantyre hasn’t recorded any cases of cholera or chronic diarrhea since the floods struck, Anthony Kasunda, a spokesman for the city assembly, said by phone on Tuesday. The city has about 884,500 residents, according to national statistics office figures.
The floodwaters washed debris and silt into intake pipes at the Blantyre Water Board’s plant at Walkers Ferry, 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of the city, halting pumping. Agriculture, Irrigation and Water Development Minister Allan Chiyembekeza, who toured the plant on Jan. 22, told reporters he wasn’t in a position to say when normal water supplies would resume.
The water board, which spends about 350 million kwacha ($800,000) a month maintaining its plants, faces financial ruin because people have stopped paying their bills, according to acting Chief Executive Officer Henry Bakuwa. Water supplies have been reconnected to some areas of the city in recent days, he said.
Unilever, Lafarge
The Malawian units of Coca-Cola Co., Unilever NV and Lafarge SA are based in Blantyre, a city founded in 1876 and named after the birthplace of Scottish explorer and missionary David Livingstone.
Businesses are encountering widespread absenteeism because their employees are searching for water, according to Malawi’s Small and Medium Enterprises Association. While most big companies have been able to mitigate the effect of dry taps because they have storage tanks and can truck in supplies, smaller enterprises aren’t as fortunate.
“Water shortages have created a nightmare for our members running lodges, restaurants and bakeries,” James Chiutsi, the association’s president, said by phone from Blantyre on Jan. 24. “Some had to scale down production while others closed shops entirely. The shortage of water poses a gloomy picture for 2015. Growth will greatly be hampered.”
The government will miss its growth projection of 5.8 percent this year due to the flooding, which caused damaged estimated at 23.9 million kwacha excluding the cost of the relief program, President Peter Mutharika said in his state-of-the-nation address on Tuesday.
The government, which has described the floods as the worst on record, says donors have pledged 21 percent of the $81 million it has requested to fund its preliminary response to the devastation. About $3.6 million has been earmarked for water and sanitation, $17.9 million for shelter and camp management, $17.8 million for food security and $15.9 million for agriculture.
Master, a mother of five who has lived in Blantyre since 2002, is hoping the restoration of Blantyre’s water supply is made a priority.
“We are only surviving through the grace of God.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Frank Jomo in Blantyre at fjomo@bloomberg.net; Mike Cohen in Cape Town at mcohen21@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net John Viljoen, Bruce Stanley
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