Zukile Majova
Extreme water shortages in Port Elizabeth and Uitenhage are pitting neighbour against neighbour.
People desperate for a bucket of water force their way into the few homes that still have running water without the property owners’ permission.
This is the case in Chris Hani Location, Kwanobuhle, where over 5 000 households are dependent on one Jojo tank that gets refilled once a day by the municipality.
Community members are also stealing the water that is delivered by municipal trucks to local schools.
For some inexplicable reason, there is running water in four households in this community.
Households that still have running water are also at risk of getting huge water bills because they are being forced to supply all their neighbours.
“The water tanker comes only once a day, and the residents are never sure when the tanker might arrive. This might sound tragic to most people, but for the residents of Chris Hani this is an improvement from earlier this year. In the last three months, this community received water only once a week,” the Water Crisis Committee in Nelson Mandela Bay said in a statement.
The residents have also highlighted another anomaly where upper middle-class suburbs were not sharing the pain of water shortages suffered by poor communities.
“On the other side of Uitenhage, in the middle-class areas, this crisis is a foreign issue as it also remains to many in Nelson Mandela Bay. Residents in the middle-class suburbs in Uitenhage have safe running water. The only thing that affects them, like everyone else, is load shedding. The western middle class suburbs of Nelson Mandela Bay also go about their days with uninterrupted running water,” the committee said.
The residents are demanding a meeting with the municipality.
The region has been hit by a seven-year drought and poor management of the water supply system that resulted in 40% wasted through pipe leakage and poor monitoring of valves.
When Minister of Water and Sanitation Senzo Mchunu visited the Churchill Dam in the vicinity of Kareedouw, he hinted that a water management entity should take over management from the municipality.
“There is a possibility that a separate entity may be brought in to manage the water valves,” Mchunu said.
