uThukela District Municipality is once again under the spotlight after a prolonged water outage in Estcourt that left residents with ‘dry taps’ for nearly two weeks. The outage reportedly also disrupted operations at the Nestlé factory, who, in desperation, finally secured the services of RASP Consultants to remedy a situation that should have been handled by uThukela.

Factory suffers financial losses

The Nestlé factory is alleged to have suffered significant financial losses as repeated assurances from the district municipality failed to produce a workable solution to the crisis.

Questions about why action was not taken sooner

It is further understood that several service providers were approached without success before Nestlé allegedly stepped in at its own cost and appointed RASP Consultants to supply and install a water pump that helped restore water to large parts of Estcourt.

The incident has raised serious questions about why decisive action was not taken sooner and why a private company was left to eventually resolve a crisis that fell within uThukela’s responsibility.

Concerns raised over failure of leadership

Residents say the situation highlights growing concerns over leadership, accountability and service delivery failures, arguing that access to water is a basic constitutional right.

Estcourt residents say their frustration is simple: Promises do not restore water, competent action does.

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