Residents suffer as Victor Khanye municipality owes R108m for water

The ongoing water crisis in the small towns of Sundra, Rietkol and Eloff in Victor Khanye local municipality in Mpumalanga has reached crisis levels with some residents saying they have had only a few drops of water in their taps in the past month.

The angry residents are blaming the municipality for the water crisis because it failed to pay Rand Water and allegedly owes more than R100 million in unpaid fees, despite them paying their monthly water bills.

Resident Samantha Hebler said: “We are paying monthly for water. Where did the money go?”

She said although they can collect water from JoJo tanks there were many old people who could not, so were suffering.

“We can’t flush toilets, bath, do the washing, cook properly, give the animals proper, clean drinking water,” she said.

Democratic Alliance (DA) ward councillor Diane Bath said water volume reductions had left reservoir levels too low.

“Some residents have gone up to 20 days with not a drop in their taps,” she said.

Bath said the DA in Delmas had been raising the issue of non-payment to Rand Water and Eskom since 2017, but the municipality had failed to come up with a workable turnaround strategy to improve the situation.

“The Victor Khanye local municipality must go under administration as the current leadership is failing the residents. The ongoing crisis is causing paying citizens big frustration,” said Bath.

The DA said the water crisis was not the only problem, as residents of the municipality had endured power cuts and power supply interruptions in the past due to inaccurate billing systems and poor revenue generation which had resulted in escalating debt.

“The ANC-led municipality [like many municipalities across the country] has deployed officials without qualifications and capacity to run the municipality. Many don’t know how – or cannot come up with a strategy to collect revenue for the municipality,” said Bath.

She said the municipality was currently R45.6 million in arrears with Eskom.

Municipal spokesperson Sentebaleng Masemola said water was pumped from the Modderbee water pump station to Sundra reservoir, from where it was pumped to the two rates towers in Sundra and Eloff.

“The water pump is switched on at 2am every morning to fill up the two towers until the water is finished in the reservoir. By 6am the majority of residents in Eloff and Sundra have water until approximately 1pm depending on the consumption,” said Masemola.

“The portion on the other side of the railway in Sundra is struggling to receive water because it is a high-lying area, but water tankers are being utilised to fill privately owned JoJo tanks in this area. Communal water tanks are also placed at strategic positions in the affected areas,” she said.

Masemola did not disclose how much the municipality owed, but said they had requested provincial treasury to assist in making a payment plan to pay Rand Water.

According to the latest financial census of municipalities report released by Statistics SA, the total debt owed by South Africa’s 257 municipalities was R72.4 billion in the 2018 financial year.

Media relations manager for Rand Water Justice Mohale confirmed that the outstanding amount owed by the municipality was R108,600,568 and the municipality was on a 40% water-flow reduction.

– gcinan@citizen.co.za

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.