DA launches water crisis petition

Water in Gauteng Province remains a major issue.

Following the water crisis and electricity outages that hit large parts of Gauteng areas recently.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) launched a petition on 25 September calling for government to be held accountable for the Gauteng water crisis.

“While residents demanded answers, local and provincial government departments, Rand Water and Eskom shifted the blame onto everybody else but themselves, leaving residents with more questions than answers,” said the DA deputy Chief Whip Mike Waters in a statement.

He added that, “The petition calls on the Ministers of Public Enterprises, Energy, Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, and Water and Sanitation to investigate why the Gauteng water crisis happened in the first place, and to ensure that measures will be put in place to prevent this from happening again.”

Waters stated that the DA will continue in their fight to resolve the Gauteng water crisis.

Ward 117 councilor Tim Truluck was also unimpressed with the water crisis and said residents should have been notified beforehand. “We should have been the first people to know about the crisis, because it affected everyone, especially the poor who couldn’t afford to buy water,” explained Truluck

Ward 102 councilor David Potter agreed.

“Not having water is an inconvenience…this is the same with Eskom, we pay a lot of money but we constantly have power cuts and all they do is increase tariffs.”

“We are supposed to be growing the country, but instead, we are going back to being the third world,” he added, “The management is becoming worse and worse in this country.”