Mayor shocked as he sees water leaks for himself
A RECENT visit to an informal settlement has brought eThekwini mayor James Nxumalo to a rude awakening: his municipality is “not serious” about curbing crippling water leaks.
Nxumalo raised the concern in a frank discussion with councillors during yesterday’s weekly executive committee meeting after an audit committee report raised concern about the losses.
“We are not serious about water losses … until we are, we will not reduce losses and save water,” he said.
“I’m raising this because I went to these informal settlements and witnessed this.”
The report said the ongoing water loss had a “significant financial impact” on the municipality.
It said combating the crisis required a concerted effort from politicians and administrators.
“This is pertinent, especially given the current drought conditions the city and province are facing. This is further compounded by delays in efforts to counter water leakages in the informal settlements,” the report read.
Nxumalo said he spent three days last week in Ward 29 (Cato Manor) after a series of service protests.
“Colleagues, I’m concerned. I wish, city manager (S’bu Sithole), that one day we can take all the senior management of this municipality – deputy city managers and department heads – to a walkabout. To walk around, particularly in the informal settlements,” he said.
He urged the city to “take this matter seriously”. “On Sunday I addressed a meeting. On Monday, I had a walkabout … and spent about three hours with them.
“In one particular section, the sewer was completely blocked. In the same area water pipes were leaking. I took my phone and called Msweli (Ednick Msweli, the city’s head of Water and Sanitation Department) and said: ‘I am not going to leave until you bring somebody to fix this.’ I had to do that. They brought someone who started fixing the sewer and the water leaking,” he said.
As he navigated the area, he saw several similar problems.
“In the same ward, we had unbelievable leakages,” he said, stressing again that the city needed to take the issue “seriously”.
“I don’t know why our officials are not responding to these leakages.
“An old lady said: ‘Mayor, we have been phoning your department on the toll free number, but no one came to fix the leak.’”
He said another problem he encountered was that city plumbers were only fixing reported leaks and neglecting others, “even if they saw them but they were not reported”.
The Mercury reported recently that the city was losing more than 40% of its water.
When the city’s finance corporate executive, Thabi Khuzwayo, briefed the human settlements and infrastructure committee early this month, he told shocked councillors that Durban had lost 41.6% of its water in the month of September.
This was up from a loss of 37.7% in August.