MUST Spokesperson, James Mphande, has told Zodiak, that the University face acute shortage of water during dry season where the water table goes down.

Mphande says this affect the Southern Region Water Board's pump-powered boreholes to supply water, thereby threatening lives of thousands of students and workers at the institution.

"Currently due to the rains, the situation has improved at the University because the water table has gone up enabling pump powered boreholes to supply enough water to the institution. But, few months ago, we had challenges with water supply. Most of the days, we were having dry taps", Mphande said.

However, Mphande believes reviving Luchenza multipurpose dam is ideal because it has the capacity to keep and supply enough water to the University which is growing its operations.

"We believe that if they can work on the dam, we will have enough and quality water at the campus. This is because it has a lot of capacity and modern machinery there for processing purifying water", He added.

However, Director of water resources in the Ministry of Water and Sanitation, Modesta Kanjaye, says government abandoned the multipurpose dam way back, soon after completion since it silted up within the first year.

Kanjaye says the dam which used about K1 billion, silted because the site and its catchment area were not technically good.

"It did not work, because technical advice was given that the site was not good and it wouldn't last. This is because the catchment area which was proposed was Bangwe, Limbe and were not feasible to allowed for the dam. But we were still asked to proceed with construction, but within the first year it silted up," Kanjaye said

Meanwhile, the Director has added that government is exploring other options to end water woes at MUST which include, constructing another dam connecting the Likhubula water system.