Water crisis poses health risk for residents

GA-MANOKE – Communities in the area have been without water for eight years and still have to fetch water from the river. They either have to drink and cook with dirty water or buy clean water which cost them R25 for a few litres. Residents have to push wheelbarrows for about three kilometres to transport the water to their homes.

According to them some parts of the water pump and a transformer that supplied the area had been stolen. “The councillor doesn’t care about us, she goes and fetch water in Burgersfort because she has a car and left us to drink dirty water.

The pump room used to have a security guard but is now without supervision which led to the theft of the transformer,” said resident and chairman of the South African National Civic Organisation (Sanco) in the area, Mr Alfred Sekgobela.

Sekgobela added that new transformers were brought to replace the stolen one, but they also disappeared without even being connected to the water pump. “We have reported the problem to the Sekhukhune District Municipality but they only made empty promises. People will become sick because we bath, drink and do our laundry in the same river,” said deputy chairman of Sanco, Mr Solly Mbuyane.

The area’s councillor, Ms Anna Masete said the transformer was too small to supply the water pump with enough power for it to work. Masete said she was aware of the crisis but they were waiting for Eskom to bring a bigger transformer as the present one was too small.

Masete said it was not known how long it would take Eskom to find a replacement transformer.“It is not the whole area that doesn’t have water, some residents get water from a source in Praktiseer. The main reasons the water shortage are illegal connections and blockages placed by some community members to prevent water from reaching other people,”said Masete.

She also confirmed that the water pump had been repaired, but the only problem was the transformer which was too small to run the pump.