City Road Sewer Pump Station is the latest victim of vandalism.
The sewer pump station that is only but 600m away from Rietspruit village is very vulnerable to vandalism and it is not the first time thieves help themselves to this municipal property.
Previously it has been vandalized several times where the underground cable was stolen and the pumps controls were vandalized.
“Now the plan is to put a 1km overhead electrical power supply line, clean the sump and purge all the lines to and from the pump station and re-commission the pump station,” said Mr Theo van Vuuren after WITBANK NEWS witnessed raw sewerage flowing into the nearby Reedstream because the pump station was not working.
And this is going to cost a whopping R600 000. It has been considered in the budget adjustment process.
“It should be noted that this pump station only services a fraction of the village which is the single quarters and an abandoned town hall. If the availability of funding happens as per plan, it is envisaged that the pump station shall be up and running by end of February,” Van Vuuren said.
If all goes according to plan the City Road Sewer Pump Station will be fixed by the end of February.
A few kilometres away the Thubelihle Thubelihle Waste Water Treatment Plant is telling another sad tale.
This R64-million waste water treatment plant was officially handed over to Emalaheni Local Municipality in August 2011 it hasn’t worked a day.
And all that had to be done was the connection of a sewer pumping main from Ga-Nala to Thubelihle, which was not constructed because it was not forming part of initial scope of work.
This waste water plant is literally a waste of taxpayer’s money as it will cost millions to get it up and running.
Thieves stole the concrete walls that surrounded the plant and ransacked the mechanical and electrical components.
In 2013 the municipality was in the process of appointing a contractor before end of July 2013, and it was expected that the plant would be up and running by the end of December the same year, when the construction of the pumping main would have been completed.
The white elephant, Thubelihle Thubelihle Waste Water is not standing the test of time.
Two years had come and gone and still the municipality sings the same tune,
“The Thubelihle Waste Water Treatment Plant will be fixed. We need to construct the pumping main. The projected costs will be around R20-million.”
This waste treatment plant was constructed in 2009/2010 financial year with the intension to decommission the Ga-Nala waste treatment plant and convert it to a pump station, because the plant was running above its design capacity. The plant’s mechanical and electrical components were outdated, it was situated on private land, there was not enough space for expansion and it was constructed within the flood line.
