Not in a hurry to apply for permission to draw water from the Zambezi River-Sipepa

Minister of Water and Resources Management- Samuel Sipepa Nkomo.

Water Resources Management and Development minister Samuel Sipepa Nkomo has revealed that  Zimbabwe is not in a hurry to apply for permission to draw water from the Zambezi River.

Nkomo said Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project (MZWP) was not yet ready to apply to the Zambezi Watercourse Commission (Zamcom) as it is facing a number of challenges.

“I am not ready yet to ask for permission to draw water from the Zambezi. We are currently organising ourselves. There is no hurry for us asking for that (permission). We are not yet there.

“Once we are ready we are going to do that and I am sure that it is going to be a foregone conclusion that we will get the permission,” he said.

Recent media reports have said Zimbabwe did not ask for permission to draw water from the Zambezi as there are no records to prove its claims that it has already secured permission for the project.

Last week, Zamcom secretary Michael Mutale said that Zimbabwe had not made any formal application to draw water from Zambezi River to the Matabeleland region.


He said: “The modalities of one riparian state seeking permission from Sadc countries over development of the river basin water resources has so far never existed.

“In fact, the creation of Zamcom is the first attempt to create such. Therefore, it is not documented on how Zimbabwe sought permission to undertake the inter-basin water transfer from the Zambezi.”

Nkomo said Zimbabwe had renewed its membership to Zamcom.

“We have ratified. There are some countries that have asked to draw water from the river. We have Mozambique and they have been allowed. Botswana also asked for permission but we (Zamcom) gave them conditions.

“They want to draw from the confluence of Tshobe and Zambezi, so we told them that they can only draw water when the Zambezi is in high tide otherwise Victoria Falls will suffer,” he said.

He said Zambia, Mozambique and Zimbabwe were on the verge of signing a Memorandum of Understanding because these are the countries which actually share the border, so they are organising themselves into how they can manage their basins within the river.

“Otherwise I'm not yet ready to ask for permission to draw water from Zambezi because we are busy trying to put logistics of doing things” he said.