eThekwini’s weighty water woes

RESIDENTS in various parts of Tongaat were recently left high-and-dry after two local reservoirs went on the blink and they had to endure a few days of no water.

In such instances, it would have been expected that the eThekwini Municipality, with an existing fleet of 174 water tankers and seven contracted companies providing back-up, would have been able to provide temporary relief for the affected residents.

That was not the case.

The companies, on year-long contracts with the municipality, refused to respond because they were not paid monies due to them by the entity.

Only after the municipality’s CFO was able to locate “savings” elsewhere was the impasse with the contractors quenched.

Mdu Nkosi, the IFP’s representative on the municipality’s executive committee, who chairs the Trading Services portfolio, said: “Yes it is true the contractors stopped their services because they were not paid.

“We were out of budget but our CFO identified some savings and the situation was resolved.”

Don Perumall, the Tongaat Civic Association’s chairperson, said many parts of their area were affected by the outage, resulting from two reservoirs with low water volumes.

“We were told that tanker contractors are not being paid. As usual we had to rely on civil society to stand in the gap for us, people like businessman Ricky Naidoo who helped us with a supply of water.

To improve service delivery and enhance its supply capabilities, the eThekwini Municipality is due to take delivery of 100 new water tankers this month.

However, some critics have suggested that the municipality, which implemented a water ration scheme for consumers in October, should give their non-revenue water issue urgent attention because more than 50% of its supply was lost through leaks and theft.

In a recent media interview, Professor Faizal Bux, director, Institute for Water and Wastewater Technology at the Durban University of Technology, shared his thoughts on the entity’s water woes.

“The low hanging fruit is for the municipality to address the non-revenue water rates. It is way more than what the global average is for many metros throughout the world.”

Bux said it wasn’t apparent that the municipality was not doing enough to address their water-loss problem.

“There isn’t sufficient evidence to suggest that enough is being done to solve the non-revenue water issue. In around 2009, non-revenue water was sitting at 32%.”

Bux said the latest figure was well over 50%.

Yogis Govender, the DA’s exco representative, said the water loss figure was “staggering”.

“The tanker debacle has been spanning for years and the municipality continues to roll out millions of rands for water tankers. “

She said tanker owners pulling their vehicles off the road over unpaid services was nothing new.

“The eThekwini Water and Sanitation department is struggling to turn itself around and unfortunate taxpayers are forking out millions,” she said.

Nkosi said the municipality was not able to satisfy the city’s water demands with its own water tankers alone.

About the contractors not paid on time, Nkosi said: “Water tanker services are allocated for in the annual budget, but along the way, many unforeseen challenges emerge and costs escalate beyond the budget.”

Gugu Sisilana, the municipality’s spokesperson said water was a scarce resource, and tankers were procured as a contingency measure due to the water deficit, which was a global challenge.

“It is for this reason that there’s a long-term project to construct uMkhomazi Dam which will augment water supply in the city. This project is due to be commissioned in the next few years.”

She said the move to acquire 100 water tankers was raised in a council meeting in September and expected to arrive this month to augment capacity of the city-owned fleet that was overstretched.