Water supply cut as town held to ransom

Eight Utrecht municipal workers held the town to ransom, by cutting its water supply for nearly two weeks, in demand of resolutions to salary disputes and better working conditions.

Their unprotected strike forced schools to close, compromised health care at Niemeyer Hospital, and even led to businessmen threatening to relocate their establishments.

Amajuba District Mayor, Dr Musa Ngubane, fears that if things go on the way they have, the next time there is a strike, it won’t just leave Utrecht’s taps dry but could leave Dannhauser without water as well.

While residents with boreholes, and farmers who had dams on their property, rallied together to offer support to friends and neighbours, children and the elderly, it was the poor who were left most exposed to dehydration and sickness.

Amajuba District staff members in Utrecht downed tools on April 30, and by election day, it was clear residents had had enough.

“I felt helpless. There didn’t seem to be anything anybody could do about it. Nobody answered their phones at the municipal call centre. During those two weeks, I understood why people burn things. I wanted to burn things,” admitted Riana Homman, a resident of Utrecht and member of AfriForum.

Principal of Utrecht High School, Henracus Truter, said he had to contend with the upset parents of learners who resided at the hostel.

They demanded an explanation from Truter as to why they should pay hostel fees, if the school was incapable of providing for their children’s basic needs like balanced meals and proper hygiene.

“It was not my fault,” he lamented. “It was local government which failed to provide for our basic needs. The learners are the future of our country and they could not get an education. We had to close the hostel and even the children from town chose not to come to school.

“We ended up with three to five learners in a class. We have always been one of the top schools in the area, with a pass rate of 90 to 100 per cent. How can we keep this up when the learners have missed two weeks of school during which continuous assessments were supposed to take place?”

Truter continued, “I was transporting water from my own borehole, using an 800-litre tank to assist the school. The district sent tankers but they were running at night and not going to every street.”

Antoinette Goosen, Principal of special needs school, Bergsig LSEN School, said she also had to close the school’s hostel and send learners home, due to the health risk created by the disruption to water supply.

“We cater for 216 learners with mild to moderate learning disabilities. Most of our learners come from oSizweni and Madadeni, but some come from as far as Ladysmith, Bergville and Ermelo. We follow a curriculum, so this means the children lost valuable school hours. We did receive water in containers from a kind businessman, Mr van Schalkwyk, who has a borehole. However, it became impractical for our workers to spend all their time continuously refilling the cistern, every time the children used the toilet. We contacted parents to collect their children from school, but many of them were working and the children don’t always have someone to look after them while their parents are at work,” explained Goosen.

A resident, who asked not to be named, said she was lucky to have a pool at her residence, as she could carry water in buckets when she needed to wash anything or use the toilet.

“A lot of residents are not so fortunate and can’t afford the extra expense of installing a JoJo tank or drilling a borehole, or even buying bottled water.” Homann added, “The water system is more than 40 years old and we are still working on the old asbestos pipes.”

“On one day, we had eight or nine pipes burst at once. There have never been so many burst pipes at the same time and we have heard the workers were sabotaging the water supply over some overtime claims. The call centre is non-existent. They never answer the phone. Last year, we had a community meeting with the management from Amajuba District, where they took note of all of our concerns, but since then, we have been given no feedback regarding a plan of action. There was no follow-up meeting and things have just gotten worse. These problems began when Amajuba District Municipality took over the water supply from uThukela Water.”

“The residents are very unhappy. Some went to the police station to lay charges, as their basic rights have been violated. There is a petition going around, some residents tried to force their way into the water works to turn the water on themselves, and stock of bottled water had become depleted at the local supermarkets,” concluded DA councillor, Gerhard Smook.

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