Rampant vandalism of water and sanitation infrastructure, allegedly driven by corrupt municipal employees and organised water mafias, is crippling service delivery across the Eastern Cape, the department of water and sanitation has warned.
Speaking during an oversight visit at the KwaNomzamo wastewater treatment works in Humansdorp, deputy minister Sello Seitlholo spoke out against the deliberate damage of critical municipal infrastructure.
In Kouga, the R42m upgrades at the plant were supported by the municipal infrastructure grant (MIG).
KwaNomzamo was officially commissioned in September, and has now entered the testing and optimisation stage to ensure all the requisite systems operate within the required operational standards.
Seitlholo said over the past 14 months, the department had conducted oversights and one of the biggest issues to emerge was vandalism.
“Many of the wastewater treatment works have been vandalised,” the deputy minister said.
“We know of water infrastructure that’s been vandalised for purposes of water mafias or tanker mafias.
“With the newly refurbished KwaNomzamo wastewater treatment works, they’ve been able to get two fundamental things correct in as far as that investment is concerned.
“One, they’ve been able to invest in quality security, including a high [boundary] wall.
“They also have the use of technology with security cameras and there is day and night patrol.
“Of course, there are municipalities where this is not the case.”
Seitlholo said in terms of water services, municipalities were responsible for utilising grants given to them by the department to invest in technologies to safeguard their assets.
“Unfortunately, most of the times [when] we see this sort of vandalism happening, we believe it is being done by employees — either they work for the municipality or they have connections with water tanker mafias.
“But it certainly is not an outside job, that we can say for certain.”
Seitlholo said the department was intensifying its enforcement with municipalities in terms of compliance.
“We are going to begin to prosecute municipalities that are polluting our water resources.
“It’s a vicious cycle in the sense that those who have to extract water from those particular resources have to treat it at a high cost and then sell it at an even higher cost.
“It is expensive for the consumers having to purchase that water.
“So, if we don’t take the enforcement actions that is provided to us by section 19 and 20 of the National Water Act, we are going to find ourselves in a position where municipalities are just getting away with the pollution of our water resources with impunity.”
The newly upgraded KwaNomzamo plant has a treatment capacity of four-million litres a day.
DA MPL Yusuf Cassim said with the new purification plants up and running, Kouga municipality had cut its reliance on dam water from Nelson Mandela Bay from 70% to just 30%.
“That has major benefits and the water quality is the best in the province, and so the entire ecosystem over time gets upgraded,” Cassim said.
“It’s important that this gets compared to other municipalities.
“Are we making progress? Or are we regressing in that respect because when you look at the expenditure, even of the grant funding, most municipalities are not spending the MIG or grant funding.
“We’ve spoken about this in the Bisho legislature on multiple occasions and I think we must just recognise that fact, because anybody can lay a complaint at the public protector.
“It took three years for the MIG funding to be approved for Kouga municipality and as soon as it was approved, they got onto it and were able to get this thing done in record time.”
The Herald
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.