Mix-up saw chemicals bound for water supply

Workers at the main water treatment plant in the Zimbabwean capital Harare were about to offload 19 tonnes of chemical into the city’s drinking water supplies – when an alert trucker suddenly realised that it was highly poisonous cyanide.

A delivery mix-up nearly had catastrophic consequences for the city of 1.6 million residents when a local storage company sent sodium cyanide to the dilapidated Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Works instead of liquid aluminium sulphate.

It was only because the driver had a hunch about his cargo that offloading was halted, the official Herald newspaper said yesterday. Sodium cyanide is highly toxic even in small quantities.

The Herald said: “Sources said there was a mix-up, resulting in the driver with the truck loaded with sodium cyanide being sent to deliver the chemical to the water treatment plant.”

After more than a decade of economic and political turmoil, Zimbabwe’s water supply is already far from reliable. Shortages are frequent, exacerbated by burst pipes that go unrepaired for weeks.

Criticising “poor monitoring systems” at the council-run plant, Precious Shumba, the chairman of the Harare Residents’ Trust, said: “We could have seen thousands of residents dying.”