FOLLOWING the announcement that Durban Mayor, Mxolisi Kaunda, has tasked the Water and Sanitation Department to deal with the water crisis in the city, ward councillor, Ernest Smith, will this week be taking up the issue of ongoing water bursts and the need for upgraded infrastructure in a council meeting.
Councillor Smith will be questioning whether the Water Department had scheduled a maintenance plan over the next 24 months, where it staggers replacement of complete main lines or the older suburbs across the Metro in order to curb the amount of failing water infrastructure.
“We want to know what the detailed plan of action is and what the anticipated cost to replace the water infrastructure in the older suburbs would be. I am also questioning whether the department is fully capacitated in terms of the amount of qualified plumbers and contractors it has, amount of water trucks available and the number of TLBs available to do work, as well as available stock on hand,” he said.
Smith said Morningside alone had been plagued with numerous bursts over the past year, and said he would be querying whether the municipality was aware that there were numerous main line valves across the Metro that were not working.
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“The DA wants to know what the plan of action is to rectify this as well as the timeframe for this to be rectified, and if they are not aware of this issue, I would like to know why the department hasn’t investigated these concerns,” he said.
This comes after Mayor Kaunda told the executive committee last week that when there was load shedding, residents across Durban were left without water.
He has given the Water and Sanitation Unit two months to devise a plan that would address these challenges.
Kaunda said along with the issue of load shedding, the population in Durban had increased, which put further pressure on water infrastructure.
He said he would be meeting with the Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation to discuss challenges of ageing water infrastructure. in the city.
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