Councillors blast ‘toolless’ contractors amid water and power outages

Nelson Mandela Bay councillors have blasted the municipality’s handling of the metro’s water crisis, accusing officials of appointing contractors without tools or equipment while residents continued to suffer prolonged water outages.

During an infrastructure and engineering committee meeting on Thursday, political head Buyelwa Mafaya revealed the metro had come dangerously close to Day Zero before recent heavy rains replenished dams.

Mafaya said water and sanitation minister Pemmy Majodina had scolded the metro during a recent visit to the city for awarding tenders to contractors who lacked the necessary equipment to do the work.

“We appoint contractors who don’t even have the equipment or the tools to do the work. This must stop.

“We end up having contractors who cannot even start the work.”

GOOD councillor Lawrence Troon said the statement should not be taken lightly.

“Consequences must be shown. Someone is responsible. How the hell can people be appointed without anything?”

EFF councillor Siya Mosi said the issue of companies with no equipment had been raised repeatedly.

“I will also relate that in Motherwell, we had an issue.

“A contractor was there, and they did not know what to do because they had no material.

“They were running around asking other companies.

“This municipality is Disneyland.

“Everyone is doing as they please. These companies are untouchables, and the people are the ones suffering,” Mosi said.

During the meeting, infrastructure and engineering director Barry Martin presented an update report on the metro’s drought status.

He said the municipality had overflowing dams.

“About two months ago, there was also a cloudburst, you can call it, out there in the upper region that feeds into the Scheepersvlakte Dam and that caused a lot of muddiness, which caused Nooitgedacht to slow down for us.

“This is what happened throughout our catchment areas, and our ability to respond to this high turbidity, or muddy water that came into our dams, has impacted our ability to treat the same volume of water consistently, so we produce less water to ensure that we clean it properly,” Martin said.

According to the presentation, the Bay’s dams were last full in November 2015.

On May 4, the city’s combined storage levels were at 26.85% and by May 7, they had increased to 91%.

“Where we are at the moment is our dams have filled up well, and we’re sitting at 100%.”

Martin said recent water outages in the city were linked to electricity outages.

“We do have problems with our grid stability on the electricity side, both internal and external, especially from Nooitgedacht, as well as Churchill and Impofu.

“We do have electrical supply problems from Eskom.

“Obviously, we can’t run the plants or pump water if we have those electrical outages.

“We do have standby generators in some of the treatment works, but these are mainly to run critical elements.”

Due to the full dams, Martin said the department was reviewing the city’s water restrictions.

Mosi questioned the point of celebrating stored water when the municipality had so many leaks.

“I feel like we’re not doing much in protecting what we have.”

Responding to questions, Martin said Nooitgedacht ran out of chemicals more than a week ago.

“A chemical truck was stuck on its way to the farm, and so we had to reduce its output.

“The truck’s normal capacity is 30 tonnes of chemicals, but two days later they did dispatch a smaller truck, and about eight tonnes came through, and production went up, and I think by the end of the week, the excess chemicals were already there.”

With a vacancy rate of 43%, acting executive director Joseph Tsatsire said a meaningful budget was required to fix leaks.

“There are 7,000 leaks, but we don’t have a budget.”

Troon said it was impossible to believe there was technology to land people on the moon, but the metro could not fix leaks.

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