Half a billion in wasted water
EMFULENI: BLAMES CATASTROPHIC LOSS ON SHORTAGE OF RESOURCES
The Emfuleni municipality – classified as dysfunctional – blames this catastrophic annual loss on shortage of staff and other resources, and yet has spent R65 million on overtime pay for employees of Metsi-a-Lekoa, its water services authority entity, in the past four years.
Council spends R65m on overtime for its water services utility workers.
Despite spending R65 million on overtime payments in the past four years to its water entity employees, the Emfuleni municipality in Gauteng has admitted it is still losing R500 million worth of water a year.
And it blames the catastrophic loss on a shortage of staff and resources. This despite residents bearing the brunt of raw sewage, rising water rates and declining water pressure due to the municipality’s failure to attend to reported water leaks and pay its R1.1 billion Rand Water bill.
The municipality – classified as dysfunctional – has also been grappling with concerns around illegal water network connections, faulty meter reading and billing, as well as old and crumbling water infrastructure
The Citizen has reported how the embattled municipality spent R65 832 014.47 on overtime for employees of Metsi-a-Lekoa, its water services authority entity, in the past four financial years despite, losing about 56% of its water at an annual cost of R500 million.
The entity’s workers pocketed a total of R17 959 165.26 in overtime for the 2018-2019 financial year, R19 633 849.46 in 2019-2020, R17 637 412.99 in 2020-2021 and R10 601 586.76 in the 2021-2022.
The municipality’s spokesperson, Makhosonke Sangweni, said Metsi-a-Lekoa has been understaffed for the past four financial years and teams could not attend to all queries during normal working hours.
“The problem was further compounded by shortage of working material and vehicles,” he said.
“In a bid to service our communities, teams had no choice but to share the limited resources. When one team worked during normal hours, the next team worked overtime often sharing vehicles between the shifts.”
Metsi-a-Lekoa operates and maintains water and sanitation infrastructure. But the municipality’s water and sanitation crisis – that has also seen raw sewage flowing into the Vaal River for over a decade – has been blamed on the entity.
Metsi-a-Lekoa has also been criticised for a lack of water demand and supply management strategy, which has resulted in millions of rands in clean running water being wasted in leaks.
The municipality said the entity has received 17 service delivery vehicles rented by Rand Water as part of a resolution taken by Cabinet to place the municipality under Section 63 intervention of the National Water Services Act.
Sangweni said this meant the national cooperative governance and traditional affairs department effectively took over the water services’ authority function of the municipality and all its ancillary responsibilities.
He said as a result of this intervention, the department of water and sanitation, as a custodian of all water services, appointed Rand Water as an implementing agency to affect Section 63 intervention objectives.
“With the understanding that the Cabinet decision came at the backdrop of the implementation
of Section 139 (1) b of the constitution by the Gauteng provincial government, the municipality has committed to fully cooperate with the injunction,” he said.
Sangweni said this was necessitated by the fact that the municipality was in dire need of additional resources.
“A number of processes were initiated under the intervention and the vehicle unveiling forms part of them.
“The intervention has delivered 17 rented vehicles for a period of three months. The 17 vehicles will be shared among the three water depots,” he said.
Sangweni said in order to decisively deal with challenges at Metsi-a-Lekoa, the municipality was planning to procure 35 service delivery vehicles.
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