R120m water promise
Money for Nooitgedacht scheme to come with team of officials to help metro implement plans
THE national government is giving the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality R120-million to fast-track the expansion of the Nooitgedacht water scheme, Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane said yesterday.
Completing the project could mean an end to the city’s water woes, guaranteeing water security and boosting chances of economic investments.
The cheque will come along with a team of national and provincial officials to help the metro implement several of its water and sanitation infrastructure plans in a bid to reduce its water problems.
However, the pledge by Mokonyane follows a similar promise by her predecessor, Edna Molewa, and President Jacob Zuma on the eve of last year’s national elections, which was broken.
They had pledged to give the metro the R300-millionplus it required to finish the Nooitgedacht project.
But when metro officials tried to collect the money, Treasury officials laughed it off, saying they would not get the money.
This forced the city to dig into its own coffers to fund the project in the meantime.
It is expected to be completed by 2018.
Mokonyane visited the Nooitgedacht treatment plant yesterday, along with Eastern Cape Local Government MEC Fikile Xasa, speaker Maria Hermans and some Bay councillors and officials to assess the work that is under way.
At a media conference earlier, Mokonyane said her department would work with the council to find sustainable solutions to the water and infrastructure crisis. “We are here to, among other things, activate our programme of action,” she said.
“We are not only looking at the money shortage . . . but we are also looking at improving the system of project implementation as well as operations and maintenance.
“The requirement [for Nooitgedacht] now is under R100-million . . . to top up what we’ve already given.
“From our side, we have managed to secure R120-million.
“It’s going to be injected into the Nooitgedacht scheme. It was also in my budget speech.
“But the thing is, money is not the solution.
“It is how we spend it and how we ensure we’ve got plans that make
sure they consume that money,” Mokonyane said.
The city applied for R1.6-billion in drought-relief funding in 2009, but received only R450-million.
The money was used for the first phase of the Nooitgedacht upgrade, which increased the water supply by 20 megalitres a day.
Once the second and third phases are complete, the supply will rise to 210Ml a day.
Nooitgedacht currently supplies 90Ml a day.
The R120-million would go a long way towards securing the Bay’s water resources and ensuring the Nooitegedacht expansion was completed sooner, the municipality’s head of infrastructure and engineering, Walter Shaidi, said yesterday.
However, due to the rapidly decreasing dam levels, water restrictions were still not off the table, he said.
The latest dam figures on Monday last week showed an overall level of 73.38% in all dams. “I’m quite positive about what the minister said. It will make the expansion quicker and it will actually make it a reality,” Shaidi said.
“Water restrictions are still a possibility for now, especially with our dam levels looking so low.”
Mokonyane said the team of national and provincial officials would provide support until the projects were completed.
“We are here from today until we are done with the projects. Every project has a timeframe – Nooitgedacht is up to 2018 – but every project [requires] aftercare. As we work here, we must make sure that by the time the scheme is up and running and completed, maintenance must be ready to kick in.
“The role of the government has always been to support the local authorities, but there has been an exception now because of the metro not having been able to run and deliver as it was expected to,” she said.
“We are going to look at the plans and assess whether they can actually help us to respond to the issues of water availability.
“We’ll look at the shortfall in terms of money and work together with the metro in ensuring there is capacity to spend.
“The provincial team of water and sanitation [officials] together with people who are part of Minister of Cooperative Governance Pravin Gordhan’s team are going to take the lead in driving the interventions we are making in Nelson Mandela Bay, so that at the end of the day we are able to make a difference,” Mokonyane said.