Government must intervene regarding water wastage, says eThekwini councillor

AN appeal by the Democratic Alliance (DA) in eThekwini to urgently investigate the collapsing Water and Sanitation Department (EWS) was recently rejected in council, and the DA will now consider approaching government to request it intervenes.

Commenting on the appeal to council, which was made through a notice of motion, Mzamo Billy, DA eThekwini councillor, said it was submitted for consideration by council after a number of councillors were inundated with complaints from residents across the city who have experienced unusual delayed response times to water and sewage leaks and water outages related complaints.

Billy said eThekwini Municipality’s failure to timeously respond to water leaks and burst sewage complaints was a cause for concern.

“According to eThekwini’s Service Level Agreement, water-related complaints should be attended to within 24 hours. However, the municipality has failed to fix complaints within this time frame, and we have learnt that complaints generally take between three days to five years or more to be attended to and successfully resolved,” he said.

ALSO READ: No further action on Morningside water leak

Locally, a leak in Morningside was reported in March, before lockdown, however no action was taken by the municipality. Following numerous complaints by residents and the ward councillor, Ernest Smith as well as articles in Berea Mail the issue was only attended to in August.

At the time, resident, Beate Kleim, said the leak had finally been fixed, however the area and road had not been reinstated. Danger tape was erected around the site in August, and to date, nothing more had been done.

Billy said in 2019, eThekwini Municipality lost almost R1 billion worth of revenue due to water leaks. He said according to the 2019 Auditor General’s Report, eThekwini municipality lost about 126,18 million kilolitres of water due to unattended leaks, which resulted in revenue losses of R968 million.

ALSO READ: Ongoing water woes in ward 27

“Our motion stated that there should be a plan in place to deal with the ongoing leaks and that there be an investigation on why it takes long to attend to such complaints. Unfortunately, this motion was rejected. It is clear that the eThekwini Water and Sanitation unit is not functioning at its optimum level and therefore strong intervention is needed,” said Billy.

He said the DA will now consider formally writing to Minister Dlamini-Zuma and the Auditor-General to request that they intervene. 

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