Zimbabwe’s infrastructure reaches new lows

(eTN) – Zimbabwe has not paid for the electricity it has been using from Mozambique, so Mozambique had cut the connection.

(eTN) – Zimbabwe has not paid for the electricity it has been using from Mozambique, so Mozambique had cut the connection. News from residencies in Harare is that there has been no power for days now.

Most people don’t have water either and a letter from a concerned resident has asked for people to stop watering their gardens. Most people now use water from boreholes because of the inability of the municipality to provide water. More and more boreholes have been dug so more and more of the underground water is being pumped … and the water table is lowering so that the older boreholes which are not too deep are running dry. Eventually, in a few years time, there will be no water left, the letter states.

With reports of typhoid and cholera in Harare it is fairly obvious that the sewage system isn’t working either.

Air Zimbabwe had its last passenger the other week – the President on a trip to Bulawayo.

Other news is that a delegation from Iran has been visiting Harare to talk about co-operation. Zimbabwe has diamonds and uranium – Iran wants both. So what will Iran swap for diamonds and uranium? Some say arms but when China attempted to deliver arms to Zimbabwe it failed – Zimbabwe is landlocked and the ship containing the arms arrived in South Africa only to be turned back. So we can only wonder what Zimbabwe will get from Iran.

Can more go wrong? Of course it can and it will.

In the meantime the government is pledging to spend millions of dollars on constructing a new convention centre and two hotels in Victoria Falls Town for the UNWTO meeting in 2013. For the government it makes sense because it feels that by hosting the UNWTO Assembly it is breaking sanctions. It is using the meeting as a political coup.

Victoria Falls Town is an island on the edge of Zimbabwe. There is not much that government wants from the town – the only industry is tourism and the bottom has fallen out of that. But the government will earn huge kudos from hosting the meeting, so that, it seems, is what it wants.

UNWTO meeting is being co-hosted by Victoria Falls Town, Zimbabwe, and Livingstone, Zambia. It is an unbeatable venue and we are all looking forward to it. We want to show off the Victoria Falls and our World Heritage Site. But I am wondering if the timing is right? While the Zimbabwe government makes little attempt to help its people should UNWTO be ignoring present Zimbabwe politics?

About the author

Avatar of Linda Hohnholz

Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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