Waters says: “It is the job of a municipal council to supply residents with basic services, water is the most essential of all.”
He alleges that money has been spent on dodgy tenders instead of being spent on maintenance and expansion of the infrastructure.
“A case in point is the financial statements submitted to the Gauteng Treasury for the most recent financial year of 2014/15 which ended in June.
“The metro had only spent 48% of the R127-million budgeted for waste water management and had failed to spend 46% of the R333-m allocated to water services.”
According to Waters, this means that the metro failed to spend just over R200-m allocated to water and sewerage infrastructure during the previous financial year.
“It is inexcusable that while infrastructure is collapsing, the ANC fail to spend available money on upgrading and modernising critical infrastructure.”
He states that, according to Rand Water, the situation in the metro is so dire that 39.8% or 128 276 219 KL (kilolitre) per annum is lost in the water system due to leaks and poor infrastructure.
“This is literally water down the drain.
“And while I acknowledge that all councils will have some loss of water throughout their water network, it is the level of loss that is of great concern,” says Waters.
“The people of Ekurhuleni deserve to know what steps you are going to take to ensure that the water infrastructure budget is actually spent and what you intend to do about the huge amount of water loss our metro is facing,” says Waters.
The Addie has requested response from the mayor’s office, but has not received any feedback.
