MBOMBELA – The drought persists, but residents are raising questions about the municipality’s ability to enforce the water restrictions.
Some of them are not adhering to efforts to conserve water. One resident said he reported the address where a pop-up sprinkler system was being used every day in June. He said the ground became so saturated that some of the water was running down the street. Yet, the wastage continues until this day.
“Some time ago we all received notices of penalties and fines that would be instituted for households exceeding their limits. Of what use are these notices if it’s not enforced?” he asked. “It cannot be said enough that we should continuously make everybody aware that no fine or penalty can ‘produce’ more water.”
- Read more: Mbombela water restriction notice
According to the restrictions, watering of gardens, flower beds, parks, lawns and other open spaces are not allowed during the day and must be done either before 09:00 or after 18:00. Vehicles can only be washed with buckets or hosepipes with automated self-closing devices or waterless products, and no automatic top-up systems will be allowed for swimming pools.
In the concerned man’s correspondence with Sembcorp Silulumanzi which Lowvelder has seen, he was informed that the company was “busy with town council to assist with the issuing of fines. This should be finalised soon. We need to stop this problems as the dam is at 38,5 percent and at this rate we might be without water by September”.
Spokesman for Sembcorp Silulumanzi, Mr Richmond Jele, this week said that such cases should be reported to them. “We will then approach such users to prevent wastage of water, hand them the drought leaflets and potential fines, and warn that repeated offences make them potentially liable to prosecution and fines by the municipality.”
He added that as Sembcorp was a private company, it is prohibited from performing any law-enforcement functions, so repeat offenders will be handed over to Mbombela for prosecution and fines. By-laws further do not allow Sembcorp to intervene and switch off water where property owners even refused to fix leaks at the moment.
“Fines can be imposed by the municipality for those in breach of the drought rules.”
The penalties for a first offence for domestic use is R750 and R1 500 for business use. For a second offence the fines for domestic violations are R1 500 and R3 000 for business use. For a third one these fines will double up to R3 000 for domestic and R6 000 for businesses.
Jele added that Sembcorp did not expect to run out of water soon. “The Kwena Dam is at 26 per cent and still dropping, therefore the situation is still serious, (but) with City of Mbombela Local Municipality (CMLM) we have a drought management plan in place. The authorities, namely Department of Water and Sanitation, is responsible for ensuring that there is enough raw water available.”
Spokesman for CMLM, Mr Joseph Ngala, did not clarify how many households have been issued with notices of penalties or fines for exceeding their limits or breaching the water restrictions. He did not respond to the newspaper’s questions about what tools and measures were in place to enforce the payment or stoppage of the breaches, how many of the fines have been paid to date nor what CMLM’s drought management plan was.
