MORE than 200 residents who are fed up with the failing water infrastructure in Overport and surrounding areas had their say in a petition which was submitted to the City on Wednesday, 15 May by Councillors Hassan Haniff from ward 25 and Chris Pappas from ward 31.
The petition called on eThekwini Municipality and the Mayor of eThekwini to urgently intervene in the failing water infrastructure in and around Overport.
The 249 residents who signed the petition are demanding that the city dedicate sufficient budget to replace ageing water infrastructure in the 2019/2020 financial year, speed up the response time for despatching tankers when there are water outages, speed up the turn around time for delivering backfill to burst sites, and to utilise local plumbers to repair bursts and leaks to ensure better quality of workmanship.
The petition was set up by the councillors in partnership with the community after growing frustrations with the high number of water outages caused by pipe bursts in the area.
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Councillor Pappas said the petition was handed over to city officials at the regional budget hearings at the Durban Botanic Gardens last week, and a copy was also sent to the Mayor’s office and the City Manager’s office.
The councillors have given the City 14 days to respond to the petition and said they would then update the community.
“Ageing infrastructure in eThekwini has seen hundreds of burst pipes leading to more than R600 million worth of unaccounted for water usage. A failure to adequately maintain and replace infrastructure is indicative of a city that does not have its priorities right. In addition to the poor maintenance, the city is also failing to adhere to its prescribed turn around times for outages which it states is two to 24 hours. Parts of Overport were left without water for more than 40 hours last week and this is not the first time this has happened,” said Pappas.
He said the controversial failure to pay city contractors on time has also meant that service delivery has been hampered and that honest, hard working, ratepaying residents have been made to suffer.
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