Villagers pour venom on WUC over water

In the wake of the complaints regarding shortage of water in Molepolole, The Midweek Sun team toured the village and indeed found rusty taps that clearly proved that no water had come out of them anytime lately. Other taps were even broken. “This tap is useless we never bother anymore, we buy water and it’s a struggle because we are a family of 11,” said one concerned resident Tidimalo Goboletswe.

Goboletswe lamented that they use wheel barrows to collect water from across town. However, what saddened the young lady even more is that her home is not very far from a large reservoir tank which could be providing them with water. The neatly fenced large reservoir tank clearly marked Matlhalerwa SR 1 1150M3 at the gate is alleged to be supplying Thamaga village yet homesteads surrounding it have no water supply.

Worse still, the village is said to have more than five similar tanks within the village. On the other hand, WUC says the tank is supplying Molepolole especially the older wards including Sebele and Motiketsane. However, Mugibelo says those are the areas which are greatly challenged but efforts are being made to have the tank impound water so that people being supplied from the tank can get water at least during peak hours. The greatest challenge he said is when there are interruptions as it becomes a challenge to impound the water.

“There are other three tanks of Service Reservoir, (SR) 2 SR 3 and 4. The village is divided into four zones and the zones are supplied from the reciprocating tanks,” he said. About 19.5 km into Molepolole when coming from Gaborone, there is a 5000-litres water tank which is said to be owned by WUC. The corporation fills the tank with water once in a while, during those fortunate days residents will flock to the place with water bottles and queue for the precious liquid. The struggle is reported to be so painful that people normally sleep there in long queues.

Sadly for some, even after the much struggle, they still end up returning home around 12 midnight with empty bottles and buckets. WUC however, maintains that wards that are hard hit by water shortage are supported by bowsing. Even then, The Midweek Sun did not see a single WUC water bowser in the village during the visit. Neither did any villager attest to the bowsers’ presence.

MP for Molepolole North Mohammed Khan said that the village is densely populated thus overwhelming WUC. "WUC is under resourced and under-staffed, this makes it difficult for them to carry out their work efficiently,” he said. Another contributing factor to the shortage of water was that the village has boreholes which are not utilised because they are not equipped. He said the boreholes have been sitting there for more than 10 years.  Molepolole WUC general manager (BoitumeloKgaodi) recently said they were doing everything they could to rectify the water problem.She said they recently received funds from the World Bank and will use it to connect six (6) boreholes in Malwelwe.