Angry residents flock to IDP meeting in Secunda
Some areas are without water for longer than two weeks.
Residents were tired of being without water for nine days when the latest Integrated Development Planning (IDP) meeting took place on October 8.
By October 11, at the time of Ridge Times’ going to print, there were still many residents without water in certain parts of Secunda and the surrounding towns.
As a result, a record number of residents attended the meeting, expecting the mayor Nhlankanipho Zuma, or the municipal manager Elliot Maseko, to be at the meeting to give them answers about the water issue.
However, neither of them showed up. DA Councillor, Terry-Lee Kleynhans, said it was not standard procedure for a mayor or municipal manager to attend IDP meetings.
The MMC also failed to attend the meeting and, after nearly an hour of waiting on municipal officials, Kleynhans began with the meeting. She thought the meeting could still be used to residents’ advantage to talk about the water issue.
Kleynhans explained the purpose of the IDP meeting, but the people shouted they wanted to talk about water and nothing else.
Residents could ask questions and wanted to know why the reservoir in Ext 22 is not being maintained and why they had to request the municipality to maintain it, as it is supposed to be part of the municipality’s services.
Residents also wanted to know if the municipality failed to pay the full amount on the water bill agreed upon.
Kleynhans said the municipality had a short payment of R12.5m the previous month to Rand Water.
“This is the second time they have made a short payment. According to Kleynhans, the municipality underpaid Rand Water in March.
Residents wanted to know how they could pay Rand Water directly for water instead of paying the Govan Mbeki Municipality (GMM).
Kleynhans said it could not be done as the municipality is a client of Rand Water and the municipality is maintaining Rand Water’s infrastructure in Secunda and the GMM municipal area.
Victor Mlangeni, director of civil engineering at the GMM, said it may take the municipality about a month to fix the reservoir at Ext 22 as they will have to replace the pump.
The residents said they could do it in two to three days as there are people in the community with the knowledge and expertise to fix it.
Jan du Plessis, chairperson of AfriForum’s Secunda branch, also had many questions and concerns. He asked why the municipality does not cut the services of councillors who owe thousands on their municipal bills.
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“The one owes R91 000 and another R89 000,” said Du Plessis.
The few municipal officials present at the meeting could not provide many answers. Kleynhans said the residents’ questions are written down and will be forwarded to the mayor and the municipal manager. They will organise a public meeting to address it.
Some of the other issues Du Plessis addressed, included the cleaner working at Secunda Cemetery charging people R200 to clean a grave while he already gets a monthly salary, why the municipality pays so much money for a bag of tar that AfriForum can buy for much less.
He demanded that lifestyle audits be done on all municipal employees. A resident said if any business is run like the GMM, it will go down the drain.
He further stated it would be better if businessmen voluntarily managed the municipality as a business.
“We don’t need the municipal workers anymore; they are incompetent,” said the resident.
AfriForum delivered a lawyer’s letter to Rand Water demanding them to stop pumping water to the residents at half capacity.
The letter also stated paying residents do not deserve to be prohibited from accessible water services.
AfriForum obtained a court order in 2022 to prevent Rand Water from applying water throttling.
“In this way, we were able to prevent it in the past,” said Hennie Bekker, district coordinator of AfriForum.
“We are now consulting with our legal team about the way forward. AfriForum will step in and protect the communities if the government departments cannot solve their issues.
“It is not fair towards paying residents to be without water,” concluded Bekker.
