Bogus bogus borehole drillers

• Published date: 05 September 2016
• Publication title: The Sunday Mail

I have known Garikai Mwaruta since the mid of the last decade, when I vigorously started pursuing my dream of drilling a borehole at my rural home in Guruve.

Then he was stationed in the upper floors of Karigamombe Building, fronting Whitedron Boreholes.

Efforts then to fund the drilling hit a brickwall as inflation became the order of the day. Then this year, some seven years into the multi-currency regime, I thought it better to re-visit my dream, the assumption that now with stable currencies, the planning, budgeting and drilling of the borehole would be much easier.

What hastened my dream was coming across Mwaruta's Facebook page, which is linked to Whitedron Boreholes, where he openly boasted of drilling boreholes on terms. I was tempted.

I made contact with him and gladly he remembered me from the conversations we had a decade-or-so earlier - which somehow heightened my enthusiasm - and I never saw any tell-tale signs that something was amiss.

He invited me to his 'new offices', 127 Nkwame Nkrumah Avenue, where he coolly explained that the tough economic environment had forced him and 'his company' off the lofty offices of Karigamombe to the more modest Nkwame Nkrumah ones. His explanation made sense, almost every organisation is downsizing and cost-cutting.

Then we got into the business of the day, I still wanted a borehole at my rural home, to supplement my summer cropping. I wanted a 60-metre deep borehole, to take care of the dry seasons.

A standard borehole is 40 metres, but I reasoned out, that with the ever-frequent dry seasons, I should sink mine a few metres deeper.

A quotation was worked out. Citing, drilling and casing of the 60 metres was put at $3 750, with an initial deposit of $1 000 and the balance to be paid in monthly instalments, to be paid after the drilling.

On Friday May 27, I transferred the $1 000 deposit into a provided MBCA account.

'Our rig is currently drilling at St Paul's in Nyanyadzi and once we are done, we will go to Guruve,' was the initial statement.

By the following weekend, we should have done the drilling, that was the promise. Then the Nyanyadzi drilling became a chorus - and the borehole, rather boreholes, at Nyanyadzi, seemed to be done to no end.

Two weeks later, Whitedron Boreholes was still drilling in Nyanyadzi and for effect, a post was pasted on Facebook on June 13 at 3.57pm: 'Our rig is off tonight for Manicaland, Nyanyadzi to be specific, for drilling. Anyone requiring a borehole in Manicaland please get in touch...