Questions over millions for reservoir near Carletonville
The councillor says that at least some of the money can be better used elsewhere.
“There are bigger water leaks on some of the sidewalks in my ward.”
These are the words of a ward councillor from Carletonville, Carlos Rebelo over money that the Merafong City Local Municipality plans to spend on fixing the Adatta reservoirs. The Herald and Rebelo visited these reservoirs, which are situated on a hill near Doornfontein, on August 1. According to Rebelo, he became worried when he saw an item in the agenda of the council meeting of July 31 which stated that R14 806 000 was budgeted to stabilise the foundation of these reservoirs as there were no problems reported there recently.
The municipality spent millions of Rands on this reservoir around 2018 to fix the damage caused by sinkholes close to it. The sinkholes damaged the pipeline linking the reservoir to the water network at Khutsong Ext 5. Thugs also stole large parts of the expensive pipes while water could not be pumped through them.
This week the visible problem that could be related to the structure of the Adatta reservoirs was a small water leak at the bottom of one of the reservoirs. It seems as if the leak stems from a broken rubber seal.
Although the Herald and Rebelo walked around the reservoirs and checked a large part of the pipeline leading from it, no further problems beside some missing manhole covers could be spotted.
“This leak does not warrant the amount of money that the municipality wants to spend on it. There are bigger leaks at some of the sidewalks in my ward in town and the municipality does nothing about it, despite me and the residents complaining about it for years. I immediately voiced my opposition to spending all this money when the item was in council,” Rebelo complains.
According to women who walked past the reservoir at the time, they have not seen any workers who might have fixed something at the facility recently.
The Herald asked the municipality’s Marketing and Communications Manager, Temba Fezani, about the issue earlier this week, but received no response by printing time.
