Mthatha area residents’ taps still dry

Residents in some villages and townships around Mthatha have been without clean, drinkable tap water for several months.

On Monday, some said they were now using rainwater.

They said the OR Tambo district municipality had told them the water outages were due to a damaged water pump.

The affected areas include Bhongweni, Payne, Ntlekiseni, Mazizini and Mabheleni.

District municipal spokesperson Zimkhitha Macingwane confirmed this week that the water shortages were as a result of a faulty booster pump at the Zamkulungis pump station.

Bhongweni resident Michelle Stafford said: “Since the start of the year, our water supply has been adversely affected due to equipment malfunction.

“Our first outage lasted six weeks, then we had water for two weeks. Now we are again going on eight weeks without water,” she said.

The Dispatch reported last week that OR Tambo municipal authorities had announced water restrictions in the area.

This, they claimed, was due to a fault with the main pipeline from the town’s main water source, the Mthatha Dam.

It was reported that as a result, authorities were using water from the Mthatha River.

On Monday, Stafford said she had inquired about the problem from the district municipality with little success, but was told there were no new valves to replace the damaged one.

Ntlekiseni resident Pearl Tyumre said her area had been without water for two months.

She said they were told at the OR Tambo offices a new pump had been ordered from Germany. She said even though some people had installed water tanks, most were now dry. Payne village resident Thabiso Sethobane said his area had been left high and dry for three months.

Bhongweni resident Thembalethu Holomisa said he had to drive to neighbouring communities to beg for water.

He said though he owned his own water tank, getting OR Tambo authorities to fill it up was costly. It reportedly cost more than R1,500 to fill one tank.

He said authorities had never bothered to implement water carts in the affected areas.

Macingwane said after the faulty booster pump had been detected and the district municipality was busy attending to it, Eskom had disconnected them from the grid due to nonpayment. She said they were hoping to finalise payment to Eskom so they could be reconnected to the power grid.

“Our long-term solution is the refurbishment of the whole pump station.”