HEALTH Minister Dr Chitalu Chilufya says the erratic water supply at the University Teaching Hospital is as a result of load shedding.

Responding to a question from Kalabo Central UPND member of parliament Chinga Miyutu who wanted to find out if government was aware that there was no water at UTH during the night, Dr Chilufya responded in the affirmative.

“We are aware as Ministry of Health that UTH does have erratic water supply at certain times in the night. And Mr Speaker, the erratic water supply is as a result of load shedding of the power supply that is being experienced in Libala area where the UTH boreholes are located. As a consequence, the volume of water stored in the tanks sometimes does run out during the extended outage. Mr Speaker, Ministry of Health has embarked on installation of two additional high level water tanks with the capacity of 400,000 litres each. This venture shall increase the storage capacity from the current 800,000 litres to a total of 1.6 million liters. It is expected that once the project is completed, UTH shall have adequate water storage during the period of power outage,” Dr Chilufya said.

“I want to emphasize that when water from the tanks runs out, there are measures that are in place to ensure continuity. UTH collects water in various vessels to ensure during the one hour period when we have that challenge, we have access to water. So we have reserve drums that we use in strategic places where we need water. In certain places where we need service, should be uninterrupted such as theatres we do reserve some water. In public utilities we always have water and they always find ways to store water in those critical times. This is a temporal phase.”

And when asked by Moomba UPND Member of Parliament Fred Chaatila when the two tanks would be commissioned, Dr Chilufya said they would be commissioned in the next month.

“Mr Speaker, the project is nearly complete and we are expecting it to be commissioned within the first two weeks of April,” said Dr Chilufya.