Mzinti community blames municipality for water shortage
Nkomazi Local Municipality (NLM) has once again been blamed for failing to deliver water services to the public.
MZINTI – Residents of this ever-growing community are accusing the local council for failing to provide them with clean running water.
Hleziphi Sambo, one of the community members in Ward 19, said, “Water is still a huge challenge in this area. The municipality promised that they would provide water through tankers, but they don’t come or if they decide to show up, it’s only once a week.
At times I would get home from work and would be told that the tankers had come during the day. Some of us work and we would appreciate a situation in which the tankers come on weekends. We are not even sure if they really come or not because no one sees them.
” The community blames NLM for not communicating issues regarding the supply of water.
“The municipality is dismally failing to communicate and we are kept in the dark. They will only communicate when we decide to take the matter to the streets and stop every economic activity. They must say if there are challenges with water so that we are kept in the loop and know to look for other avenues to obtain water rather than to sit and wait in vain,” said Mandla Ngomane.
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Residents said they had not been informed of any possible water interruptions and had not been provided with water tankers. The ward councillor, Cllr Jobe Shabangu, refuted claims that they do not communicate, arguing that they try by all means to communicate issues affecting the community.
“Our water issues are being influenced by the continuous power cuts as a result of load-shedding. The floods are also causing water challenges, because when the Mzinti River is full due to the rain, we get affected because we are unable to pump the water to fill up the big tankers. Also, if there is no electricity we are unable to have the water pumped. We do alert our community members in time through the Mzinti Agenda page on Facebook if possible water interruptions are expected,” he said.
Shabangu added that there are other challenges they face as a municipality like the growing trend of illegal water connections which affects the entire network.
