Sewage crisis threatens holiday season
Political parties and community members are working together to combat the E. coli in the Winkelspruit Lagoon and the ActionSA are taking the municipality to court for failing to solve the sewage crisis.
STEPS are being taken by ordinary citizens and political parties to remedy the chronic sewage situation that is threatening to cancel the looming peak holiday season.
ALSO READ: City apologises for sewage predicament
Some beaches, including Winklespruit, remain closed because of the E. coli bacteria infestation. The stream that flows into the sea in the area is a brown cesspool, causing a stench that can be smelt kilometres away, depending on the wind direction.
Sarel Taljaard, Peet du Toit, and other residents who are trying to find a lasting solution to the matter, said the contamination has directly affected many people.
“Business people are losing revenue because there is no one who can possibly pay money to come and experience this stench. We want to bring the community together to fix this because at the end of the day, it is going to benefit all of us,” said Sarel.
Peet agreed, saying it seems as if the municipal employees who are tasked with the job of fixing the broken pump stations and leaking manholes seem not to care. “How can human beings let other human beings live like this? eThekwini has totally failed us,” he asked.
Peet, Sarel, and other residents have thrown their weight behind an initiative to get an organic chemical that can be poured into the infested rivers to clean them of E. coli. They said trials are ongoing, and testing will determine whether it could offer a permanent solution.
In the meantime, charges were laid against eThekwini by ActionSA on November 16, accusing it of putting the residents’ lives at risk by failing to solve the sewage crisis. The party’s provincial chairperson Zwakele Mncwango said the papers were filed at the KwaZulu-Natal High Court.
The DA has said it has invited the national minister of tourism, Lindiwe Sisulu, to urgently conduct an oversight visit in eThekwini so that she can see how the tourism industry has been affected.
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