The municipality and the DA weighs in on the Orphanage fire

Since the incident on Sunday where an orphanage in Pine Ridge caught fire during a power and water outage the municipality as well as the DA have released a statement about the reason for the water and power outage as well as the response of the fire department.

The DA proportional representative councilor for the area, Cllr Shafie Jallal was on the scene assisted that evening. The have also released a statement on the matter.
It is interesting to note that the information regarding the response time of the Fire Department contradicts each other. The statements are as follows.

The statement issued by the DA
The Democratic Alliance is outraged with the manner in which the residents of Pine Ridge have been treated by the Municipality. We express our best wishes to those who have suffered as a result of the fire. We will continue to fight for them and all residents of Witbank to receive decent services.

The DA proportional representative councillor allocated by the party to represent the voters of Pine Ridge Cllr Shafie Jallal attempted to assist the residents from 18:00 on Sunday until after 01:00 on Monday morning..

Cllr Jallal endeavoured to obtain assistance and/or information from the electrical department, the water department, the Executive Mayor nor the Municipal Manager to no effect. Despite pointing out that the community had not had power for most of the day and that water supply was dropping to low levels.

Cllr Jallal noted that it took the fire department two hours to arrive at the orphanage only for the Fire Engine to run out of water.

The Democratic Alliance expresses its total disgust at the shabby treatment that the residents of Pine Ridge received from the municipality. Especially considering that the suburb as with most parts of eMalahleni suffer from both power and water shortages as a result of a total breakdown in the infrastructure. The very least that should happen is that in winter, when fires are more prevalent, the fire engines should have sufficient water resources to cope with any eventually.

The voters of eMalahleni deserve a municipality that communicates with the community and attends to emergencies as soon as they are reported. The DA pledges to have a fully functional Emergency Call Room within days of winning the Local Government Elections in the municipality on 3 August. A city of this size should not have to rely on a part time Facebook page as the primary means of communication, Theo van Vuuren’s Facebook page is only followed by about 19 500 people whereas there are almost 150 000 voters and about 50 000 households.

The DA calls on the voters to vote for change that can work, eMalahleni needs to change for the better and especially to have a Municipal Manager who lives in Witbank rather than leaving the city with its broken infrastucture every night and weekend.

Statement issued by the municipality
On Sunday 19 June2016 at 19:00 Fire Section received a call that there was a house on fire at Pine Ridge, they responded timeously to the call and arrived at the scene with a fire tanker and extinguished the fire. However, the water got finished almost 8000 liters before the fire was totally extinguished. There was no water and electricity at Pine Ridge, and Water Works was contacted to bring water tanker. They eventually came but it was after a long time and the fire had done some damage. Then dumping down was done by the Fire staff.

The electrical supply to the area is not stable due to the bulk cable being stolen along the Old Coronation Road on a daily basis, which requires the Municipality to ringfeed through the residential area. This supply is in turn interrupted by illegal connections and overloading.

The Old Coronation feeder is attended to on a daily basis by the Electrical Maintenance teams. An overhead line has been constructed in order to mitigate theft of underground cables. However, this is also being vandalised now.
The specific incident referred to on Sunday 19 June 2016 is due to cable being stolen again and the Electrical Maintenance teams worked until 04:00 on Monday 20 June 2016 to restore power to the area.

Water outages at Pine Ridge over the previous weekend were as a result of mechanical problems at the Witbank Water Purification plant. This resulted in decrease in water level at Point D which is a commanding reservoir which supplies Point A with water. Point A reservoir supply water to Pine Ridge and Klarinet. The effect of the mechanical failures at the plant did not only affect Pine Ridge and Klarinet but the whole of Emalahleni except Ga-Nala, Thubelihle and Rietspruit. The mechanical challenges at the plant were resolved after six hours however it took more than six hours for the system to fully recover.

The municipality is in a process of appointing long term service providers in order to assist with emergency works as and when required. This will ensure and improve the turnaround time in attending to water outages and backfilling of open excavations

The municipality can confirm that the orphnage has no municipal approval.