DESCENDANT of the Ndebele monarch, King Lobengula, Prince Peter Zwide Khumalo yesterday slammed plans by Bulawayo City Council (BCC) to pump the heavily-polluted Khami Dam water into households to alleviate supply problems.

“The Bulawayo community read with shock in one of the papers about the city’s proposal to use Khami Dam water to supplement the city’s potable water supply,” he said.

“After a series of tests of Khami Dam water, it was recommended that it would never be suitable for public consumption because of its high chemical, organic and microbiological pollution load which was not possible to bring down to World Health Organisation (WHO) standards required for potable water,” he said.

He said the Khami Dam water had high sewage content coming through public water courses such as Khami and Phekiwe rivers and was abused by the Rhodesian security system.

He added that the Bulawayo city fathers should inform the public what methods of treatment they proposed to use to deal with high BOD/COD, E-COLI, suspended solids, odours and water colour to meet WHO standards.