|PIC1|Churches in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe are launching emergency distributions of water and warning of 'disastrous' water shortages that could lead to diseases like cholera.

"Many people in western areas have had virtually no water for a whole month. There are already cases of diarrhoea and we are facing a crisis," said Pastor Promise Manceda, one of the leaders of Churches in Bulawayo, a network of more than 70 congregations across the city.

The churches report that three of the five dams supplying the city's population of 700,000 have run out of water, with the fourth due to run dry later this month. "With people, especially the poorest, already suffering, it is too ghastly to contemplate what will happen when we are down to only one dam," said Promise. The churches' warning comes soon after Zimbabwe's main bread producer was quoted in state media as warning it had only two days' supply of flour.

In a statement, Churches in Bulawayo declared: "The health hazards that loom in Bulawayo are very real and very serious. The vast population of Bulawayo has been exposed and left vulnerable to diseases such as cholera. Thousands of people have been forced into the degrading and inhuman situation of using ground around their homes as toilets under cover of darkness."

Churches in Bulawayo are appealing within Zimbabwe for funds. And British aid agency Tearfund, which works through local churches, is preparing to supply twenty 5000-litre water tanks to be placed in communities where the need is greatest.

Churches say the catastrophic decline in water supplies is due to unregulated farm resettlements putting pressure on supplies, a dispute between national and local government over the city's water supply, vandalism and drought. They are appealing to local and national government, with little response.

The Churches in Bulawayo statement adds: "It saddens us deeply that, though we wrote to the minister responsible for water and to local government for two months about the looming disaster, there was neither acknowledgement nor any reply to our letters. Hearts sank when it was reported in the media during the past two weeks that the government will not intervene in the Bulawayo water crisis.... This has left a sense of hopelessness and desperation among the people."

Karyn Beattie, Tearfund Disaster Management Officer states: "It is a measure of just how serious the crisis in Zimbabwe has become that churches now have to supply water to local communities once their appeals for local and national government action went unanswered."