[LISTEN] Mayor explains plans to address Polokwane’s water issues

POLOKWANE – The visit included projects of electrification, water treatment and renovation of a taxi rank.

“We are trying to recover from a loss of time on our projects due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It is important for me to visit, to firstly check if the contractor is on site, as well as if they are working and what are their targets,” she said.

The mayor explained that the visits ensures there is accountability on the money spent by the municipality on behalf of the people. “We visited a number of sites and at all of them, there are contractors on site and there is progress.”

Nkadimeng addressed the city’s water issues during the visit. “We firstly started with our underground water, where we are doing a total of 67 boreholes which will provide between 18 and 34 mega litres to supplement the water we receive from Lepelle Northern Water. We went to a site where a contractor is building a water treatment site, where the water from the boreholes will be treated and blended to be potable water and safe for human consumption,” she explained.

Nkadimeng also explained how a new waste treatment site will work. “The Polokwane waste treatment’s line connects to this new site in Soetdorings, which will have a 20 mega litre reclamation capacity, where the water will be cleaned and saved back into our communities. As a municipality we have estimated that we need at least between 50 and 60 additional mega litres and we currently receive 30 mega litres short daily,” she added.

Nkadimeng says targets were aligned and that the municipality believes that by the third quarter of the municipality’s financial year (between January and March) that “we should be able to see quite a number of these closing up” to align with the beginning of the new financial year (June/July 2021).

She said she was happy with the progress she has seen, but added that she will sit with their team in terms of the tangibility of these projects. “These contractors will be around between 20 and 24 months after operation, and if we don’t plan well for the handover, to young and qualified water engineers and water technologists, we might have a problem and that is what I would want to tighten up.”

Nkadimeng said they need to begin with sustainability. “Take a child from Seshego and train him in water quality management or other qualifications that can support such projects. It will ensure that people who derive quality from these projects, run them, and they will be sensitive as they are the ones who receive from the project.”

She said council has around R1,9 billion which goes to capital expenditure. “Our target is to ensure that nothing goes to waste and is not spent, because we are allowed to review our targets due to the six months we lost due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “