Water task team to tackle major issue
Being without water because of water pipe bursts has become a way of life for many people working and residing in Ladanna and the city's central business district lately.
POLOKWANE – Being without water because of water pipe bursts has become a way of life for many people working and residing in Ladanna and the city’s central business district lately.
Several residents told Review that on reporting the water problems to the municipality, they were told there was not enough manpower available to deal with all the water pipe bursts that continued to occur in two or three different places at the same time.
In one instance, according to residents, a water pipe burst in Devenish Street was left unattended with water left to run for over 16 hours. These water pipe bursts occurred the day after they had just been repaired, a resident explained to Review.
Residents who live in Ladanna said they had been left without a supply of water for the past two weekends, but the municipality had made no effort to supply water tanks to ease the situation.
One of the residents affected, Jolien Beetge, said she had a six-month-old baby whose bottles had to be sterilised. “This was as real challenge without any supply of water,” she said.
The water situation has become so dire that premier Stanley Mathabatha has established a task team to come up with a turnaround strategy aimed at addressing the water delivery challenges faced by the municipality.
The appointment of the team, headed by senior general manager in the premier’s office, Nape Nchabeleng, transpired from a meeting of top officials from national, provincial and local government as well as representatives of water boards in Polokwane last week.
Municipal spokesperson, Malesela Maubane, said the municipality worked continuously to get the problem under control and in most cases the problem was still that the infrastructure could not support the rising demand for water.
