South Coasters fed up over continued festive season water woes
People have been complaining everyday about the water issues but it has fallen on deaf ears.
Every festive season without fail Ugu District Municipality lets communities and holidaymakers down with poor water supply.
Once again these holidays most areas did not have water.
Gamalakhe, Margate, Ramsgate, Bhobhoyi, Izingolweni are few of the areas that haven’t had water for weeks if not months.
People have been complaining everyday about the water issues but it has fallen on deaf ears.
Those who are lucky to have water, say they cannot drink it as it comes out the tap rusty or brown in colour.
Water tankers have also been delivering the same water to people.
Besides the lack of water, people have also been getting sick as a result of E.coli on the beaches and lagoons. Uvongo beach was closed after a recent sewage spill.
Residents and visitors have been venting on social media to get Ugu’s attention but as usual there was no response from the municipality.
Ugu spokesperson France Zama said it was aware that people have been getting brown water in the taps.
He blamed this on the heavy rains.
“We established that in some parts of our operational areas our water systems were producing brown colour like water which was the result of heavy rain turbid inflows into our raw water abstraction points.”
Zama added that this occurred during a peak period where water demand outweighed the overstrained system’s supply capacity.
“Various water tests were conducted to determine standard of water quality for human consumption and we do sincerely apologise to the affected communities for the inconvenienced caused.”
Sphindile Malanga from Bhobhoyi said she has not had water for four months.
“We have to pay someone R20 per 20 litre to get water. Sometimes we see water coming out the taps but its only for a few hours and and then its stops.”
Ugu has received R19 million grant funding from Cogta to upgrade the St Helen’s Rock waterworks in Bhobhoyi.
Some R4 million of this funding is set aside for borehole drilling in Umuziwabantu and Umzumbe municipalities.
“A large portion of this grant will be directed to the implementation of an upgrade of capacity at the Bhobhoyi waterworks which currently has a water production capacity of 85 megalitres whereas the water demand from this system exceeds 120 megalitres,” said Zama.
He said through the implementation of this upgrade, Ugu was certain that areas under Ray Nkonyeni Municipality will not experience water supply disruptions during peak season period.
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