DEAR Editor,
It was with great interest that I read in last week’s Herald that the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) was to investigate Ugu’s unsecured water reservoirs.
On May 2, I sent Ugu municipal manager Dhanpalan Naidoo an email informing him of water discharge and security problems at the View Road reservoir in Ramsgate with supporting photos.
I received an immediate response from Mr Naidoo, where he said “Thank you for your concerns. I do agree we have many serious challenges and we need to sort out our problems. I am not a technical person but much of what you are saying makes a lot of sense. Will request our managers to respond and engage you.”
I appreciated this prompt response and thought that there would now be some action initiated from the ‘boss man’ at Ugu. But no manager contacted me.
I then made contact with Paul Watson at Ugu on May 28 and copied him on the original correspondence to Mr Naidoo. Mr Watson said that he that would dispatch a team to look at the control valve to resolve the problem.
On July 21 an excavator was brought to the reservoir to attempt to dig a trench from the reservoir, in my opinion, in an effort to hide the leak from the public.
The excavator fell into the trench it was digging and a couple of days later a second excavator arrived to take it out. Quite an expensive exercise, I imagine.
The supporting photo shows the valve access where the piping and valves are submerged in water. This means that strategic water controls at the Ramsgate reservoir (the heart of our water supply) are currently rusting up at an unnecessarily accelerated pace. No one at Ugu seems to care or worry about this or tries to fix the problem.
The water is also still leaking onto View Road today with resultant damage to the asphalted road, and obvious costly wastage, which we, the customers, ultimately end up paying for. The HCM pothole maintenance team could not fix the potholes on this road two months ago because of the continual leaking water from the reservoir twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Needless to say that this ongoing leak is the basic cause of the tar lifting in the first instance.
As of today, the fencing on the west side of this reservoir remains open, the gate has been unlocked for about three years, is broken on the bottom hinges and strategic valves are not locked. We are now told that the DWA is going to investigate Ugu’s unsecured reservoirs? What a waste of time and money for Ugu’s inefficiency, apathy and inability of attending to a small security detail?
Mr Naidoo comes across as a very well-meaning and competent person, but it is quite clear that his staff are letting him down.
DOUG SPARKS
