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Prepare for dry taps, says Gakuo

By BILLY MUIRURI February 7th, 2014 2 min read

An extensive water shortage will hit city estates beginning this weekend, and will run for five days every week in some areas.

A new water rationing programme by Nairobi Water and Sewerage Services (Nawasco) will make weekends difficult in Eastlands, Starehe, Eastleigh and Kamukunji.

NairobiNews has also learnt that weekdays will be tough in estates off Waiyaki Way such as Uthiru, Kinoo, Mountain View and estates on the Thika Superhighway.

These include Zimmerman, Mwiki, Kasarani, Ngumba, Githurai 44 and 45 and Garden estate. The dry taps come in a week residents are grappling with increased parking fees for both private and public service vehicles in a city that is becoming very expensive to live in.

The rationing programme prepared by Mr Kagiri Gicheha comes only a few weeks after the County executive member in charge of water and environment John Gakuo killed any hopes for water reprieve. Mr Gakuo said rationing was inevitable because of the dry spell that threatened to extend well past March.

“The catchments for Nairobi water in Murang’a and Nyandarua counties were hit by delay of the short rains. This will affect supply in the city.

However, the effect has been distributed across the estates and this means no area will miss water for a prolonged period,” said Mr Gakuo.

But the programme, seen yesterday, showed some estates will go without water from Monday to Thursday while others will have bad weekends.

Among the estates that will run dry over the weekend are Utawala, Kangundo Road, Kariokor, Pumwani, Mathare, Juja Road, the whole of Eastleigh, Pangani, Savannah, Tassia and Nyayo estate.

From Monday to Monday, several lower middle class estates will run without water most of the day and will only get a reprieve in the evening.

They include Gikomba, Bahati, California, Majengo, Maringo, Buruburu (Phase 4 and 5), Shauri Moyo, Ofafa Jericho, Hamza and Makadara

The city has been divided into six key areas; Northern, Eastern, North Eastern, Southern, Western and Central regions.

Nairobi Water’s spokesman Mbaruk Vyakweli, however, said the programme  was not a rationing one but an even distribution of water.

“The dry spell is not unique. We are trying to distribute the water to as many estates as possible. The amounts have slightly reduced,” said Mr Vyakweli. Mr Gakuo attributed the new development to lack of alternative sources of water for the city. “We rely on rain water. We might resort to drilling boreholes soon,” he said.

In 2009, the then City Council of Nairobi drilled several boreholes in estates like Kahawa West.