Tsakane – Among other residents, Philip Msanga has lived in Extension Six for the past three years and he says they have always had issues with water.
“Almost every week, I can say we had water cuts. And sometimes we would go without water for more than 24 hours,” he explains.
The construction of the Zulu Xhosa Reservoir has been in progress for more than two years.
The process is still in the excavation phase.
“Normally the construction should not take longer than nine months,” explains Tom Ralph, who is a civil engineer, upon inspecting the site.
In his expert opinion, the reservoir should have been completed in 2017, latest.
When work started, the Ekurhuleni municipality’s water and sanitation department had allocated R11-million for the project.
Also read: Will the reservoir take two more years to be completed?
But in the Sixth Ordinary Mayoral Committee Meeting for 2017, the metro adjusted the R11-m budget to R48-m for 2017/18.
“We don’t know about any serious things they discuss in their offices; we only want them to finish.
“Sometimes a lot of water just flows out into the main road,” adds Msanga.
The metro failed to respond to our first media inquiry.
A concerned employee on the construction site, run by LMS Consortium, says the problem may be management.
“I started working here in August 2017, and all we did, for the most part, was just pumping out water from the main hole.
“There was very little else done.”
He says they have not even been working consistently throughout the months.
“In the time I have been here, there only two months (February and March) that we have worked the hours we should all week.”
He says that the workers do not have all the equipment they need to do the work at hand.
“There are 19 of us and five shovels.
“We do not even have the complete PPE (protective) clothing to be on a construction site.”
The site has been buzzing with activity in the last two months.
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