Emfuleni workers pocket R65 million overtime but water crisis persists

The embattled Emfuleni municipality in Gauteng has spent over R65.5 million on overtime pay for its water department employees despite losing more than half (about 56%) of its water to leaks at the annual cost of R500 million.

This despite residents bearing the brunt of raw sewerage, rising water rates and declining water pressure due to the municipality’s failure to attend to reported water leaks and pay its R1.1-billion Rand Water bill.

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Dysfunctional

The municipality, classified as dysfunctional, has also been grappling with concerns around illegal water network connections, faulty metering reading and billing as well as old and crumbling water infrastructure.

Gauteng MEC for Cooperative Government and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Lebogang Maile has revealed in a written provincial legislature reply that the municipality has spent a total of R65,832,014.47 on overtime for Metsi-a-Lekoa employees in the last four financial years.

According to the municipality’s website, Metsi-a-Lekoa is a dedicated water services authority entity which operates and maintains existing water and sanitation infrastructure.

But the municipality’s water and sanitation crisis – that has also seen raw sewerage flowing into the Vaal River for over a decade – has been blamed on the entity.

Metsi-a-Lekoa has also been criticised for a lack of water demand and supply management strategy, which has resulted in millions of rands in clean running water being wasted in leaks.

Collapsed service delivery

Last week the ANC Youth League in the region marched to the municipal offices in Vanderbijlpark to voice its grievance with corruption and the collapse of services in the municipality.

Regional Coordinator Jabu Maitse said service delivery had virtually come to halt in the municipality, with no roads and raw sewerage flowing on the streets as well as constant power failures.

“Service delivery vehicles, equipment and staff are not maintained and the staff in the parks department is sleeping the whole day while the grass is cut by a private service provider,” he said.

DA’s member of provincial legislature Kingsol Chabalala said they were engaging their councillors in Emfuleni to table the issue of water losses and cutting down on money being spent on employees’ overtime.

He said this will assist in adopting measures to curb the waste of taxpayers’ money and ensure that the little money that Emfuleni has was spent wisely for the benefit of its residents.

Chabalala said Emfuleni’s ratepayers have been left in the lurch due to the municipality’s failure to attend to reported water leaks, blast water pipes and sewer blockages.

“This has resulted in sewer spillages across many streets in Emfuleni, which is a health hazard,” he said.

The municipality spokesperson Makhosonke Sangweni said they will release a statement on the hefty overtime payments, but could not say when.

“We [are] still busy and you will get our statements once we are done, hopefully today (Monday),” he said.

The municipality, ranked amongst the worst run in the country, has said before that the water and sanitation management crisis was being addressed.

– siphom@citizen.co.za