Outrage over water supply leads to protests
Angry protestors set alight the councillor's house and Ugu's water truck.
THE angry Amahlongwa community set alight its ward councillor’s house, as well as an Ugu water truck on Monday.
Umkomaas police brought calm, but will still be monitoring the situation as roads were blocked with burning tyres and stones.
The community says its feels that the Umdoni Municipality and Ugu District Municipality have been a failure.
“We have experienced serious water problems for the past six months,” said a member of the community.
She said that sometimes weeks would go by without water in the area.
“We are forced to drink water from the rivers like animals, which is unhygienic. Ugu is failing its core service delivery,” she added.
Ugu spokesman Sipho Khuzwayo said Ugu and Umdoni municipalities condemned the method chosen by the Amahlongwa community to voice its frustrations.
“It sets back service delivery,” he said.
“The municipalities have suffered a loss of thousands of rands due to the vandalism of the bridge, burning of the water truck, Jojo tanks and the councillor’s house,” he added.
He admitted that the Amahlongwa water supply system has been experiencing strain due to limited water source capacity.
He said Ugu had been working to resolve the strain for the past six months and this exercise was about to be completed this week.
“The local councillor has been working closely with both Ugu and the community in providing water tankers to the area as a relief measure while work to balance the water supply to the entire Amahlongwa area was being done,” he explained.
Mr Khuzwayo appealed to communities not to vandalise infrastructure when protesting as this ended up being a setback for both the community and government.
