DA puts spotlight on City’s neglected pools

GREEN, filthy and neglected. This is what has become of the City’s pools after being closed for the duration of the lockdown, without chlorine.

In response to public complaints of the dire state of public pools, DA Community Services Whip, Councillor Mmabatho Tembe lead an oversight visit to local pools in the city, which commenced at Alex Bulley Swimming Pool in Montclair on Monday, 29 June. The pool, which is just over a million litres in size, is currently in a neglected state, filled with green water.

Addressing the media during the oversight, Tembe said the DA understands that the Covid-19 pandemic brought about many challenges to the City, mainly because there has been no staff to look after the pools during the hard lockdown.

“This meant that the pools were to be closed until lockdown ended. The president then announced a phased approach to easing the lockdown regulations, which meant slowly municipal entities were to start preparing for the level in which they were to open. As the community services committee, we looked at asking the relevant officials about the maintenance plan and update of the pools as there has been evidence of pools that have turned green and left neglected,” said Tembe.

Following inquiries, she said that the Parks, Recreation and Culture unit responded on the matter and it was ascertained that the chlorine cylinders account needed to be resolved due to the finance catching up with the lockdown outstanding payments.

Tembe said the department further explained that due to contractual issues, a decision would be made as to whether it would be more cost effective to drain the pools, clean tiles and then refill or wait till the chemical contract is in place. She expressed that she felt the Parks, Recreation and Culture Department had managed city pools maintenance poorly and that to drain and refill the pools would cost the city more money, than if they had sorted out the chlorine contracts in time or effectively, as this was already an issue just before lockdown was enforced.

“Sports for competitive reasons will be opening soon and we need the facilities to be available. If the pools are drained, these won’t be available for people wanting to swim. We also don’t want local pools to be like Rachel Finlayson Pool in Durban, which was an eyesore for years. We would like this to be finalised as soon as possible before more money has to be used, as the City is already in a financial crisis,” said Tembe.

Sharing Tembe’s frustrations are shared by ward 64 councillor Gavin Hegter. “Municipal staff were not allowed to go to work due to the lockdown and now that they have returned to this situation, they can’t resolve it because the city has not done the basics of getting a contract for chemicals in place. Surely the City knows that they need to renew the contract. This is a problem and it is happening time and time again. That is our concern. The people at the top need to make better decisions,” he said.

“I think it just comes down to basic service delivery and pre-planning. Something as simple as the maintenance of a park or a pool shows the municipality’s ability or inability to plan and pre-plan for these types of situations. Some people may consider this a minor issue but if you take the municipality as a whole, this is a reflection of whether the municipality is performing or not. If we’re not taking care of our basic facilities, what about other bigger facilities? Are they being maintained? I think that is the larger question that needs to be posed to the municipality,” added DA Committee member and ward 27 councillor, Ernest Smith.

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