Anger over water
hough there was not much more information to share with residents than had already been published on the water crisis, it was good the Ndlambe mayor and municipal officials held community meetings this week to keep residents updated and hear their frustrations.
What was clear from the meeting at the Port Alfred Civic Centre is that the municipality is in a helpless position at present, as it is as dependent on a higher power as we all are – on the one hand for God to send more rain that will fill our dams, and on the other hand for government to provide the funding we need for an emergency desalination plant.
Taking this approach, a prayer meeting was held right before the update meeting, in which Christians thanked God for the recent rain and asked for more abundant rainfall and for lasting solutions to the crisis.
There were many recriminations, including over the municipality’s lack of communication to residents to impress on them the magnitude of the crisis and the imminence of Day Zero.
We hope municipal officials have learned from this.
Amatola Water also came under fire, and rightly so. They need to be held to account for how they spent hundreds of millions in taxpayer money on “quick wins” that did not deliver a drop of water.
It was shocking to hear Amatola had not even started on the long-term bulk water project for Ndlambe, and yet has still been receiving grant funding from the government.
And we agree with the municipality: we want to be rid of Amatola Water.
They have demonstrated they are incapable of delivering.
The money channelled to them should go directly to the municipality, with oversight of course, to prevent irregular and wasteful expenditure.
But a lesson for everyone to learn from this is that we have been reckless with our water consumption.
Residents have just taken for granted that we have water coming out of our taps.
Even after Talk of the Town published the alerts we did receive from the municipality about low dam levels, we noticed pools continued to be topped up with municipal water, and residents continued to use hoses to water their gardens – things that were already prohibited by the water restrictions in place since December 2017.
Of course, there is abuse of water that goes beyond this.
Ndlambe needs to attend to all unmetered properties, fix leaks timeously, and collect the outstanding R32m in unpaid water levies. This requires political will as well as competence.
T