llembe district municipality handed over 110 Jojo tanks to its four local municipalities recently.
The tanks were donated by the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs to help with water provision in the region.
Looking at the ‘hotspots’ in the region, the district municipality gave 40 tanks to Ndwedwe, 40 to Maphumulo, 20 to Mandeni and 10 to KwaDukuza.
Also read: Planning for Ilembe’s future
Mandeni mayor Siphesihle Zulu urged the public to look after the tanks after some were destroyed during protests.
“Today we would be speaking a different story had those Jojo tanks not been destroyed. The district would be adding not replacing the tanks. It seems we are working backwards as government and not forward and that is a huge problem in the district,” said Zulu.
Ilembe deputy mayor Dolly Shandu asked the tanks be placed where they would be easy for water tankers or trucks to reach.
“The municipality spends a lot of money fixing water tankers because a lot of the access roads in the district are inaccessible for vehicles as big as the trucks and taking into consideration the load they carry,” said Shandu.
She spoke about the alleged assault of water tanker drivers and their assistants in Isithebe when delivering water in the late hours.
“The reason these deliveries sometimes take place in the evening is that we have some residents who see a water tanker and bring out ten and more containers knowing very well that there are other residents who still need to collect water.
“So when the tanker runs out of water, residents that did not get water end up assaulting our staff. We cannot have that anymore.
“Should this abuse of municipal workers continue, we will have no choice but to stop servicing those areas,” said Shandu.
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