The tankers that the city council sends to deliver water every few days are often the residents’ only hope for clean water.

After several years of drought and patchy rains, reservoir levels have fallen dangerously low, pushing the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) to limit water supplies in an attempt to conserve the resource until the rainy season starts in October.

Mguni added that the city council had made repeated appeals to Zimbabwe’s Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing for Bulawayo to be officially declared a water shortage area, which would channel resources toward rehabilitating the city’s water infrastructure.

Simela Dube, the director of engineering services at the city council, confirmed to the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a phone interview that some residents don’t get any water at all because of low pressure in the city’s pumping systems.

In Pumula South, resident Nelson Mande Lunga told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that he stopped getting running water in his home weeks before the city started limiting water supplies to one day a week.