Some city residents are receiving bills of up to R60,000 despite being without water for 150 days. (Logan Ward)
DUrban residents are fed up with the city's water crisis, with some living without tap water for up to 150 days, while still receiving no water from eThekwini municipality despite not having running water in their homes. Some people are being charged water bills.
Residents demand an end to the alleged “politicization” and “sabotage” of essential goods, and want the city to work with the community and private sector to find solutions to the city's water quality and supply problems. .
Isakwini's tourism industry, which relies on holidaymakers' spending, has been severely affected over the past two years by water cuts in parts of the city and beach closures due to dangerously high concentrations of E. coli in the water.
Verulam Water Crisis Committee representative Rohan Roshan Lil Roussin spoke at the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) town hall expert meeting held at the University of KwaZulu-Natal about the water crisis caused by some residents this week. He said he had discussed it. They received a water bill of R20,000 to his R60,000 even though there was no service in their home for 150 days.
Lil Roussin told the meeting that the town of Verulam had been “severely affected” and that four people had been burnt to death in a furniture factory fire in the town. Water flowing into a fire hydrant.
He claimed the water supply had been disrupted, citing a whistleblower who reported seeing chains and locks on valves blocking the flow of water from a local reservoir.
“On March 1st, we received a distress call that a factory in Verulam was on fire. The fire department arrived with a small tank and realized it was a large factory, not a small one, but inside He said he did not know there were four people trapped.”
“The closest place to get water was Tongaat, but we were told that the water in Tongaat had stopped, and then the closest place was Umhlanga. The factory was burnt down and four people died.
“This is a culpable murder case against eThekwini because they tried to get water and there was no water. God will not forgive if the plane crashes and there is no water.
“This is very serious. If the officials are interfering this much, they are bleeding,” he said.
Lil Roussin claimed city officials were aware the valve was locked and sent an email to keep local residents from knowing because it would “spoil their necks.”
Former eThekwini city manager Mike Sutcliffe said the metro had invested well under R33 billion in infrastructure such as roads, water and electricity over the past 10 years. He said maintenance budgets, which should be at the level of 10% of the value of property, plant and equipment, have fallen from 7% to between 3% and 4% over the same period.
“We are faced with the twin problems of underspending and reduced maintenance costs that we must address,” Mr Sutcliffe said. He estimated that the city's infrastructure assets were valued at around R1 trillion and would cost R2 billion a year at a 2% replacement rate.
Sutcliffe said the city has struggled to recover from infrastructure damage caused by flooding since April 2022, and there was a lack of coordination between state and local governments to deal with repairs.
A report from the Auditor General cited eThekwini for several issues including fraud and corruption, lack of performance targets and measurements, and lack of information.
He said the city should provide information such as a list of all tankers that provide water to the community to ensure transparency in how the money is being used.
The city employs approximately 3,500 people in its water and sanitation department, 150 of which were professionals, engineers, and technicians who should be retained for succession planning purposes.
Ratepayer Pat Reddy agreed with Mr Sutcliffe that underspending was an issue.
“As ratepayers, we don't have the power to monitor how our money is spent. As Dr Sutcliffe said, we have plenty of money, but how do we spend it? “How can we go from the best city in the world to a disaster like this?” said the Lady.
“City leaders are letting us down. The city is always talking about sabotage, flooding, and all the other impacts. If the city had proper planning, our management and technical teams would If I had, I’m sure I could have taken care of these things.”
Rob Dyer, an urban planning engineer who retired from eThekwini, said the city's affirmative action hiring policy prevents many qualified white, colored and Indian professionals from bothering to apply for subway jobs. He said the policy should be reviewed. Management in the water and sanitation department was also “top class,” he added.
“Water and sanitation development is an engineering job, and engineers need to run the show. But there is too much management and non-technical management structures,” Dyer said.
Chris Fennemore said he resigned from eThekwini after being assaulted and receiving death threats from union representatives after exposing the water sludge issue.
“eThekwini does have a significant amount of skills, some of them world strong, but structural issues have made them very limited. We will not work with eThekwini as there is no point in going through chain management,” he said.
Fennemore suggested hiring experts to manage supply chains to reduce the presence of “criminals” stealing from the system, and using government intelligence systems to track water grid systems and ensure transparency. did.
Janet Simkins, founder of Adopt-A-River, said water quality is a “huge issue … and perhaps even a crisis” facing the city. Additionally, water hyacinth has been observed growing in dams such as Inada Dam, which historically had no problems with invasive alien species.
He said the private sector had offered to provide diesel for the generators at the Oranga sewage pumping station. It said this was to keep pumps operating during load shedding in the event of diesel running out, but the offer was rejected as a “process” had to be followed.
eThekwini's head of water and sanitation, Ednik Mzweli, said the department was working on some of the issues raised during the meeting, but declined to comment in detail due to time constraints. .
He suggested that the SAHRC receive further written submissions on the matter and consolidate them before submitting to the City.
“The city's attitude in these efforts is that we try to be open-minded, so I don't respond to the comments that are raised. We look at the issues that are raised and We are already aware of some of them and are working to resolve them,” Mr Muzweli said.
“What we want is how do we solve the problem? As a city, we think we understand the challenge well and are working on it, but obviously not fast enough.” No. We would like to hear from stakeholders on how we can accelerate this.”
SAHRC chief executive Vusumuzi Mkhize said the water crisis was a “very sensitive issue that threatened lives” and the commission would collect further submissions from the public to come up with immediate, medium and long-term solutions. The proposal to do so was welcomed.
“eThekwini has the capacity, which local governments may not have, to help solve problems…We must be action-oriented and solutions-oriented, and we must We have to avoid politicizing the issue. If we politicize it, we will be condemning what we think is an ideology here that water is a right to life.
“The community needs to continue supporting us to find solutions to the problem,” Mkhize said