Mopani mayor Pule Shayi vows to restore water to Limpopo villages, with nearly half the region’s boreholes either dry or damaged.
The Mopani district municipality in Limpopo has launched the Fix All programme in a bid to alleviate persistent drought.
Mayor Pule Shayi visited drought-stricken communities with a team of water experts at the weekend.
He visited the villages of KaMninginisi, Ka-Nwamankena and Basani in the Greater Letaba local municipality.
Nearly 1 000 boreholes drilled by Mopani are dry
This was after investigations by the municipality showed that nearly 1 000 of the boreholes drilled by his municipality were dry.
“This is a rural community and our people depend mainly on water provision by the Mopani district municipality because we are a water service authority.
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“We are a dry province and so is the country at large. We turned to ground water through the drilling of boreholes. That proved to be costly, but unsuccessful as well because most of our boreholes do not produce a single drop of water,” said Shayi.
“There is a total of 1 743 boreholes in this region.
“But only 991 of these boreholes are operational, while 114 of them ran dry.
Borehole equipment stolen
“At least 309 of our boreholes need to be energised by Eskom. Our investigations revealed that some of our borehole equipment has been stolen by thugs.
“A total of 74 of them were stolen with cases of theft opened in different areas.
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“As if that was not enough, 84 of our boreholes were vandalised,” he said.
A ward four ANC councillor in the village, Molata Cedrick Machipi, was gravely worried.
Machipi told the mayor that his village depended on one borehole.
Providing clean water to more than 300 families
The borehole, he said, provided fresh clean water to more than 300 families.
He said the borehole was drilled by the apartheid government in 1968.
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