Clairwood: ‘a forgotten community’

HOUGHTON, Horseshoe and Sirdar roads have been on the receiving end of constant sewage blockages and overflow for the past few weeks with no clear solutions from the Department of Water and Sanitation, residents claim.

Floods of raw sewage in residential premises, often overflowing onto the road where young and old have to hop between nauseating puddles just to make their way to school and work while anxiously hoping no trucks or vehicles will splash them before they arrive to their destinations. This is an unfortunate reality, which is sadly becoming the norm for many, both in the formal and informal areas of Clairwood.

“Sometimes you can even see the faeces floating above the ground. The smell is unbearable and we have to keep our doors and windows closed all day which is not ideal because my son and I are asthmatic and one of our family members also had his leg amputated. We cannot afford the risk of living in such conditions and having our home as a breeding ground for bacteria. It is a health hazard. When workers did come to evaluate the situation recently, but they didn’t do anything apart from opening and checking the manhole. Most of the water had dried up and they said they couldn’t use the pressure-hose on soil and just poured disinfectant fluid. This is not a once-off problem, it is recurring. We have a toilet that we can’t use because the sewer line was so blocked, any attempt to flush it results in the water over-flow out,” said a Houghton Road resident who has lived in the area for 21 years.

eThekwini Municipality’s Spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela confirmed that a team had been sent on site and that the relevant unit had been tasked to attend to the matter.

However, a displeased ward 32 PR councillor, Sharmaine Sewshanker shared that the situation remains dire. “Residents’ yards are flooded up to their doors on some days. How can homeowners, who pay rates, be made to endure such an inconvenience? Even those in the informal settlements are suffering the same problem.

“I understand that reporting a fault can be frustrating for the residents hence why they always come to me with a complaint because I have direct contact with members from the department. I’ve generated numerous reference numbers for Houghton Road alone. My problem is generating a reference number is one thing but getting the city to respond and get the job done is another thing. Going to the site after a day or two when most of the mess has dried up doesn’t help with anything. There is no permanent solution. Now more than ever we’re living in a pandemic, the departments should be speedily resolving these issues not waiting for it to dry and temporarily cleaning it up.”

“Clairwood is a forgotten community, the municipality should be putting more emphasis on this area because of the uniqueness of the area, being both a residential and business are coherently, and circumstances the people face daily,” said Sewshanker.

Mayisela further added: “The municipality would like to reiterate that the issue of blocking manholes continues to be a problem in the city, this is despite the speed that the city moves with to attend to such blockages. What is compounding our woes is that some members of the public continue to dispose of foreign objects into the system resulting in it to block. The city does receive reports of manhole blockages from time to time and it responds to them but within a short space of time, we find ourselves having to go back to square one. We also have a serious concern of our residents who are invading land, who later on connect illegally to our system, with material, which is not compatible with the system, resulting in it malfunctioning. eThekwini will never derive any joy from subjecting its residents to manholes are that blocking. For us to be able to win the war against blocked manholes we need to work together unceasingly by heading all the calls made by the municipality to residents to refrain from dumping foreign objects into the system.”