Residents threaten to shut down Lenyenye
They also demanded that all the boreholes drilled and equipped by the municipality in the township start working immediately.
Residents of Lenyenye are threatening a total shutdown of the township if their demands for reliable water supply are not met by the municipality soon.
The threat was made last Wednesday during the residents march to the local offices of the Greater Tzaneen Municipality where they handed over a memorandum of demands to Ward Councillor, Justice Ramodipa.
The protesters threatened a total shutdown of all business, government and municipal offices, schools, a clinic and the closure of all roads leading to the township.
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In the memorandum, the residents who were singing freedom struggle songs, waving placards while other carried water containers, they demanded that the municipality stops sending tankers to bring water but supply them with clean running water from their taps.
“We are not sure if the water we are being provide with is purified. The money that is used for water tankers should be used to repair the water supply system to the township,” said community leader, Sechaba Malatji while reading from the memorandum.
They also demanded that all the boreholes drilled and equipped by the municipality in the township start working immediately.
They further demanded that the municipality cancel all the water bills send to the residents because there is no reliable water supply.
“How do you charge a household for water that you are not providing,” asked Malatji.
Malatji added that the township have been experiencing water shortage for many years.
Residents want to know, when will the project to replace old water pipes with new steel ones be completed.
One of the marchers, Celia Makwela (72) of Stadium Street said her toilets have blocked because they have not had a water supply for the past two months.
She said a water tanker does come but not often enough.
Ward Councillor, Justice Ramodipa accepted and signed the memorandum which he promised to forward to the municipal headquarters in Tzaneen.
Spokesperson for the Mopani District Municipality, which is the water authority in the area, Odas Ngobeni conceded that there is a major challenge to supply water to Lenyenye Township.
“The biggest challenge in the supply of water to Lenyenye is the illegal connections on the bulk pipeline from the Thabina Dam. There is a lot of tampering on that pipeline,” Ngobeni said however, as a long term solution, the district municipality is busy laying a steel pipeline from Thabina Dam to Lenyenye, which is the project to be implemented in phases.
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He said they will only be able to do three of the 12 kilometres of the project during the current financial year. “In the meantime, we have drilled four boreholes in Lenyenye and they are all linked to the reticulation system.
It’s just unfortunate that only two are currently operational because we are using generators to run them, while we wait for Eskom to connect electricity to all the four,” said Ngobeni.
He admitted that the two boreholes are not able to supply the entire township, but they engaged the local municipality to activate water tankers to augment the supply from the boreholes.
“We appeal to the ward committee to maintain close contact with the municipality, so that we are able to quickly intervene when they run out of diesel to avoid a situation where the community goes for days without water,” he said.
