Tongaat’s Water Woes

IT will be another bleak festive season for some residents of oThongathi who still do not have water in their taps - a disruption they have been experiencing for the past two and half years.

Fed up with the lack of service delivery, and their pleas falling on deaf ears, the oThongathi civic associations, together with concerned citizens and businessmen have formed the Tongaat Task Team (TTT), to help fight their cause.

The team, led by businessman Ricky Naidoo of VenkPac, who has been supplying oThongathi with water for the past few years handed a memorandum to eThekwini Mayor Cyril Xaba, at his mayoral imbizo this week.

“This escalating water crisis has left our residents extremely frustrated, furious and enraged. Our cry comes from bitter memories of the April 2022 floods when the entire town of Tongaat was left arid and dry, we suffered 200 days of "Dry Taps", we firmly say "No, to Dry Taps again and we are adamant that we will not have a repeat of the agony and humiliation that we had endured previously,” said Naidoo.

He said when they contact the councillors pleading for answers as to why they were faced with sudden water outages they are often told that they were waiting for updates from the officials.

“This is a daily occurrence. Off recently Tongaat has not reported any major burst pipes , strangely enough our water is shut off and upon reaching out to the first point of contact, which are our councillors, we are met with the almost same answers, we are awaiting an update.

“Access to clean water is non negotiable and it is a basic Human right.We are given to understand that a staggering +-R45m was spent to rebuild the Tongaat water works but it seems that we are back to the drawing board due to the failing infrastructure all around us,” said Naidoo.

The memo handed over by the TTT said there should be better communication.

“Please can we request that communique is sent out timeously to prepare us the people on the ground to store water. Lack of Municipal Water Tankers in our area, there are currently 4 to 5 water tankers that distribute which is wholly inadequate. Tongaat needs +-12 Tankers in our area,” read the memo.

Krishna Reddy, the chairman of the Tongaat Civic Association said the people of oThongathi were tired of waking up to no water.

“The burst pipes and water shut down is a weekly problem, at times there will be no burst pipes or issues yet the reservoir will be shut down. We are now on 17 days without water, it goes in the evening and comes back a week or more later. We don’t get feedback, it is sickening.

“The most affected areas are Tongaat South with Emona who have the most issues but it's an issue but also Buffelsdale, Chelmsford Heights, Watsonia, Mitchell Village and Mithanagar to name a few, although the whole of Tongaat is affected,” said Reddy.

Yogis Govender, the DA chief whip and member of eThekwini executive committee said although the municipality has been proactive in fixing issues, they have lacked in putting money into developing oThongathi.

“The water crisis, which has plagued our town for far too long, is a stark reminder of the municipality's inability to provide even the most basic of services to its citizens. But the water crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Our town has been ravaged by a series of devastating events, including the tornado, riots and floods that have become an all-too-common occurrence.

“From the generic responses received from officials, it does not appear at all likely that any project will be fast tracked, nor did they tender any explanation as to where all the water is going and why did the Tongaat Water Network collapse. Tongaat water works is producing the same volumes of water as they did since the plant was refurbished after the 2022 floods. This means that water is leaving the plant but not reaching the intended reservoirs. The current water crisis is into its second month, again during the festive season,” said Govender.

At the imbizo, the City’s head of Water and Sanitation, Ednick Msweli, said the consultants were working on the designs for the new pipelines and a budget will be allocated by March.

“There is a long list of about two pages of projects that are happening, some at design stage, some at construction, and some are completed. You need all of them to solve the problems of Tongaat,” said Msweli.

He said there was sufficient capacity, however, the constraint was from the river.

“The license that we have to follow allows us 22 megalitres a day but normally we take 16, there are still 4 megalitres a day that are missing. We now need a capacity upgrade where we estimate how many pumps are needed and that is phase two of the Tongaat Water Works which we are now currently working on,” said Msweli.