Residents refuse tankers access to Hlobane Dam

Vryheid water tankers have been denied access to the Hlobane Dam by residents in the area.

These tankers were intended to supply water to the hospital and rural communities that do not have access to boreholes.

While the Dam is currently about 79% full, Hlobane residents claim the water is theirs and are refusing access to the dam until the municipality finally addresses a community issue that has been festering for years.

A representative of the Hlobane community, who asked not to be named, explained that residents are aggrieved by the fact that the municipality has shirked its responsibility to maintain buildings and infrastructure that it inherited from the Hlobane mine after it closed.

“Since the hostel was inherited from the mine for housing there has been absolutely no maintenance on the building or on the roads. This issue was tabled before the council in June 2013 and still nothing has been done. They are playing cat and mouse games with us and no one is getting water until the municipality listens to us,” he said.

Hlobane police station commander, Captain JB Mncwango, said that while there hasn’t yet been any outbreaks of violence, municipal officials are terrified to fill the tanks from the Hlobane Dam in case they are attacked later in their homes.

“The residents said the water belongs to them. We intervened and explained to them that the water belongs to God and not to the people. We tried to make them understand that, whatever their grievance is with the municipality, denying water to people was no way to deal with it,” said Capt Mncwango.

Food and safety manager at Meadow Meats, Robin Glenn, said the abattoir had been paying for and collecting water from Hlobane Dam for the past five weeks and now they too have been denied access to the water by the residents.

“The Hlobane residents said that as long as the municipality does not talk to them, they are not giving anybody any water. They said that they were asked to attend a meeting at the municipality yesterday and they had waited for three hours in the conference room and nobody from the municipality had pitched,” explained Mr Glenn.

He continued, “I tried to plead with them and explain the serious impact that this would have on us. We have 260 staff members that are paid an incentive based on the amount of meat that is cut. Without water, we can’t slaughter so the staff is paid less and if this continues, we might have to consider retrenching.”

While the municipal manager is addressing the residents at a community meeting today it seems unlikely that this matter will be resolved.