Water crisis continues as residents’ taps run dry

LOUIS TRICHARDT – Certain parts of Louis Trichardt and Tshikota are once again without water, and have been for the last seven days.

Review spoke to Wally Schultz, chairperson of Afriforum in Louis Trichardt to find out why there was an ongoing water crisis. “The boreholes are in a total state of dysfunction,” Schultz said.

Schultz said Eric Muneri was the new acting general manager of technical services at the Vhembe District Municipality (VDM), and he hoped Muneri would assist to help solve the ongoing water crisis.

Last week Schultz and some committee members went to inspect the boreholes. “The gate to the pump station was open, hanging by a thread of wire, the door to the blockhouse was not locked and was standing wide open. We have already lost over R5 million worth of pumps and equipment as a result of this carelessness,” Schultz said.

After numerous phone calls and messages to the VDM, Schultz received the following message from Muneri on Wednesday morning.

“I thought you were told about the problem about the Y-piece in the plant which we stopped the plant on Thursday last week for three hours, but since then we never came right as production became low. Yesterday there was a problem with the Makhado electricity supply that was happening at pump station three.

“They managed to resolve the problem only yesterday afternoon. Since yesterday everything looks normal.” (sic)

A few minutes after receiving this message, he received a new message from Muneri saying that he was busy attending a strategic retreat and that he was told that the raw-water pump was being replaced. He would then give Schultz further information in the afternoon.

By the time of going to print, all attempts by Review to contact the VDM for comment proved to be fruitless.

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