Ngwathe will not be run by contractors and consultants, says mayor

“We are done with contractors who do not know what to do. The community is suffe- ring. The council is suffering. People sitting here are suffering. The lives of councillors are in danger because they are now doing the officials’ work. We are moving away from the era where contractors and consultants run this municipality. We need to give the people of Ngwathe water,” Ngwathe’s executive mayor, Ms Victoria de Beer, said earlier this week in an information session for councillors, stakeholders and the media.

She said the government had spent a lot of money to see that communities got a better life, yet the implementation did not reflect that.

She committed the municipality to see that the projects announced would be completed within the given timeframe and emphasized that the infrastructure committee must oversee the projects. She also stressed the immense failure of numerous projects launched in the Ngwathe towns of Parys, Vredefort, Heilbron, Koppies and Edenville in the past due to contractors not doing what was expected.

She confirmed that the contractors for refurbishing the Parys water treatment works (WTW) and building and installing a backup generator had finally been appointed. She said four projects would run concurrently to address the dire need for water supply in Parys, Schonkenville and Tumahole.

Besides refurbishing the WTW and installing the backup generator, the other projects include replacing 15 km of old asbestos pipeline in the municipal water network, mainly in the town centre and the older part of Tumahole. It also includes the completion of a direct pipeline from the WTW to Reservoir 1 in the Ghana section in the heart of Tumahole.

The construction of the direct pipeline is now 90 per cent complete and awaits approval from the Department of Roads and Transport to cross the R59.
Setshabelo Trading and De Keer Construction have been appointed to refurbish the WTW, with DLV Projects & Engineering as the consultant. Setshabelo Trading, under the guidance of Makhaose Consultants, will also be responsible for replacing the 15 km asbestos pipeline. They are expected to start the two contracts concurrently within the next two weeks. Both projects must be completed within eight months.

Refurbishing the WTW includes working on the clarifiers, screens, filters, the dosing system, replacing some valves and fixing leaking pipes.

Solar Kasi Company is building and installing the backup generator and will start on 21 August. The project must be comple- ted within 60 days.

Ngwathe’s technical department built the direct pipeline internally.

The refurbishment of the WTW, the replacement of the asbestos pipeline and the installation of the backup generator are government funded.

The Department of Water and Sanitation earlier approved R66 million to upgrade the Parys WTW, excluding the R3 million government fun-ding for the generator.

With the projects set to start within the next two weeks, the mayor said the already dire water supply situation in Parys, Tumahole and Schonkenville would be under even more strain for the next eight months. They did not foresee a total shutdown of the WTW, however.

She said councillors would now have public meetings in their respective wards to come up with ideas to address these water challenges in the coming months.

She referred to the repeated community-initiated shutdowns due to frustration with the municipality’s failure to supply clean, drinking water. These led to JoJo tanks being torched earlier this year.

De Beer added that when her administration came to office, there were more than nine water tankers, which have since been reduced to three or four.

Importantly, she emphasized the role the infrastructure committee would have to play in overseeing these projects.
“We are taking this seriously. We can’t have a water treatment plant where millions have been spent for 15 years, and yet people do not have water,” she added.

Even more crucial, as the infrastructure committee pointed out in the past, is the role the so-called project ma- naging unit (PMU) must play in these projects to prevent the disastrous outcome and wasted expenditure seen with several projects in the past.

Although appointing contractors to refurbish the WTW and install the backup gene- rator is a step in the right direction, residents and stakeholders alike were sceptical about more promises. Councillors to whom the Gazette spoke also said they were cautiously optimistic.

The question remains where the Ngwathe municipality, already struggling to meet its financial obligations, would get the money to fuel the generator and whether security at the WTW could prevent vandalism and theft.

Ngwathe has not made progress in recent times in preventing illegal electricity connections and tampering with prepaid meters. This, adding to the enormous debt Ngwathe owes Eskom, promises no quick fix for the municipality’s electricity crisis. Seen in the context of the past winter months, this would result in high running costs for a backup generator.

A dedicated power line to the WTW is a more sustainable solution and will receive attention after the projects launched now are completed, the mayor said. She added that she had asked the province for assistance in this regard.

After a question from a member of Save Ngwathe at the end of Tuesday’s stakeholder meeting, tempers ran high, and people got into a scuffle. Outside the Forum building, unhappy residents who could not attend the information session due to access limitations waited to see the mayor but to no avail.

The MEC of Cogta, Ketso Makume, who was supposed to meet with concerned residents last Thursday, cancelled his meeting with community leaders due to a burglary at his house.

On Wednesday, Lesedi FM broadcasted an interview with the MEC on service deli- very issues, particularly in Ngwathe.