The Post

Residents frustrated over water, power cuts

NONHLANHLA NOZIZWE HLATSHWAYO nozizwe.hlatshwayo@inl.co.za

DISGRUNTLED residents at Parkgate, north of Durban, have formed a committee in an attempt to tackle water outages, which they claim have been going on for weeks.

They are fed up, claiming that their councillor is unreachable and has not assisted with the matter.

The chairperson of the committee, Rabind Deoraj, said they formed the committee two weeks ago as a resolution to engage with the authorities.

“The committee consists of individuals in the community who are volunteering their time to organise meetings with authorities and keep residents informed on what is happening,” he said.

Deoraj said their issues ranged from water outages to electricity outages and service delivery at large. He said they were almost guaranteed to be without water and or electricity every week.

“This is frustrating because the ward councillor, who is supposed to be overseeing this, is never available. We have not been able to even hold a meeting with him, because he is nowhere to be found. We cannot even reach him on his cellphone,” Deoraj said.

Another disgruntled resident, who asked not to be named, said he was forced to travel to his brother’s house, which is 6km away, in order to bathe.

“I do not understand how we can be without water when there is a pandemic. We are told to always keep clean and wash our hands, but how can we do that with dry taps? We pay rates and tax, but we do not have basic services. It is really frustrating to not have such a basic need,” said the resident.

Ricky Naidoo, a Verulam business owner and community activist, said the water issue in Parkgate and Verulam has been a pressing matter that had been going on for far too long.

Naidoo has extended his help to distribute water in the affected areas in and around Parkgate. “We have been assisting where we can, and we have seen how frustrated residents are. This is violating their rights and strips them of human dignity,” he said.

Naidoo said they met with the municipality about a year ago in an attempt to solve the problem.

“The municipality blamed the water outage on the electricity outage, saying without electricity, it was not possible to fill up the water reservoir. We concluded that they would put generators in place that will work when there is an electricity outage, but to this day, we have heard nothing,” he said.

When the ward councillor was contacted, he said he would not answer to the media.

The eThekwini Municipality did not respond at the time of publishing.

NEWS

en-za

2021-10-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-20T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://thepostza.pressreader.com/article/281539409152764

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