SEBOKENG. – The visit took place during National Water Week which takes place from 21-27 March annually. Mahlobo was accompanied by Sedibeng District Municipality Mayor Lerato Maloka, Emfuleni Local Municipality Mayor Sipho Radede, officials from Rand Water and the Department of Water and Sanitation respectively.

Mahlobo expressed his delight at the progress made by Rand Water in stopping sewage spillages in some parts of the Vaal and asked that the service provider speed up the work. 

The purpose of the site visit was to assess progress made to date since the appointment of Rand Water as the implementing agent to stop the long-standing issues of sewage spillages in households, streets and leading into Vaal River.

Mahlobo apologised to the residents for the government’s delay in getting rid of the stench that caused discomfort, health hazard for community members and contaminated water in the Vaal River.

“Our first mandate is to stop sewage spillage in people’s homes. We assigned Rand Water because we trust it as our entity and with their capacity. Sewage in people’s homes was our biggest headache. It was causing lots of inconvenience, children were starting to have respiratory problems.”

Mahlobo added that the key task at hand was to divert sewage from the street to the nearby Treatment Plant because the Plant’s capacity had been expanded to deal with large volumes of inflows.

“We are very pleased with the progress made thus far and we applaud Rand Water for making progress. I came here early this year to introduce Rand Water and the contractors. They have since managed to deal with the first task in Zone 10 and the sewage is now out of people’s homes.”