POLOKWANE – The Polokwane Municipality is in violation of its obligation to supply water to communities in its jurisdiction, according to a final report released by the South African Human Rights Commission last week following an inquiry that was done in October 2021.

The commission found that the Polokwane Municipality “acknowledged that it is not providing water to all residents within its jurisdiction due to an increasing population, traditional leadership allocation of residential land which does not comply with the Municipal Development Master Plan, urbanisation, as well as the lack of maintenance of aging infrastructure”.

The commission recommended that the municipality provide them with a detailed plan indicating how the local authority will ensure continuous access to water to all affected areas.

“The plan must be supplied to the commission within three months after receipt of the report, and must further establish the measures of addressing the synergy on the allocation of residential land by traditional leaders with the municipal master development plan and submit the same to the commission within three months,” the recommendation reads.

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Limpopo is regarded as a water scarce province on the basis that the available water resources may not be sufficient to supply water to the citizens of the province, however, this is despite a number of dams that can ensure uninterrupted supply of water to various communities.

At the time of the inquiry, all major dams in Limpopo were more than 90% full, yet many communities do not have access to clean water.

This clearly demonstrates that the failure of municipalities to provide water may not be attributed to the shortage of water in Limpopo, the commission found.

The SAHRC acknowledged that the province does not have infinite water sources and that the main source of water is surface water.

“However, during the inquiry, none of the municipalities attributed the shortage of water to the sources or unavailability of water resources in Limpopo. The contributing factors across all the municipalities are mismanagement of water resources and a lack of funding. The commission also found that there is a lack of sufficient skills in some of the municipalities,’ the report stated.

In response to the report, spokesperson for the municipality, Matshidiso Mothapo said the challenge of water supply is the result of demand exceeding supply and that the municipality has made progress in terms of the management of the challenges since the inquiry took place two years ago.

“In the next three months, we will see the completion of the Seshego Water Treatment Works by end of November 2023 to produce 10 Ml per day, and this will ensure stability in consistent water supply to Seshego, extensions and parts of Blood River. For the next 12 months, we will see the completion of the Sand River North Water Treatment Works by end of June 2024 to deliver 18 Ml per day and the additional water will be sufficient to cater for the city at large and also extend to the extensions.”

Mothapo added that Lepelle Northern Water will commence with the refurbishment projects in November for both Ebenezer and Olifants bulk water schemes with the focus to change all the pumps at pumpstations 1,2 and 3 and the remainder of the 7km Specon pipeline will also be replaced to ensure that interruptions are minimised.

“The upgrades to both Ebenezer and Olifants will bring an additional 40 Ml per day to the city to address current and future water demands. However, in the interim, the municipality has procured its own water tankers to supply water to affected areas as a form of temporary relief.”

Speaking to the media recently, Mayor John Mpe said these projects with the regional water schemes that are concentrated in the rural areas will help assist with the availability of water to the rural communities too.

“We take this opportunity to thank Coca-Cola as a private partner to come on board to assist the municipality in providing water as a much-needed commodity by drilling boreholes in some of our villages. We will work side by side with Lepelle Northern Water and the Department of Water and Sanitation to improve on the programme to achieve sustainable water provision across the municipality and in this regard, we thank Minister Mchunu and President Cyril Ramaphosa for making resources available to upgrade the bulk water infrastructure at the Ebenezer and Olifantspoort plants,” Mpe said.