Big flush for Bulawayo

Anyone visiting Bulawayo from this week will be surprised to hear a chorus of toilet flushes for 30 minutes every morning and night.

This is because the municipality of Zimbabwe’s second largest city will introduce a “big flush” – the simultaneous flushing of toilets – for 30-minute periods between 6am and 6.30am and between 8pm and 8.30pm.

It’s all in a bid to avoid sewer bursts by unblocking the sewer ways after days of critical water rationing.

“Because of limited water availability, we don’t have sufficient sewage flows in the system to clean itself. The sewage system is designed in such a manner that because of the peak flows in the morning, when residents are flushing or bathing, it discharges and cleans itself,” engineer Simela Dube told the Bulawayo Chronicle.

Bulawayo’s citizens go for an average of three days a week without water.

So far, one of the city’s six water-supply dams has been decommissioned.