Estcourt residents wait for change

RESIDENTS of Estcourt have been without water since April. Despite their ongoing complaints and meetings with the uThekela District Municipality, they are still waiting for a solution.

Some of the areas affected are Foderville, Colita and Papkulas.

Virusha Latchoo lives with her two teenage children, brother and her parents, aged 72 and 62.

“Water is a basic need. This issue has impacted our lives financially. We are now buying bottled water and using additional electricity to warm water for baths. This is causing our electricity bills to increase.

“I have two children who go to school. My brother and I work. It’s challenging to get ready in the morning.

“We pay our rates and utility bills so we expect proper services.”

Latchoo, 43, is a manager at a secondhand shop.

“My father is elderly and he has to walk to a borehole to fetch water, while we are at work and the kids are at school.

“We don’t have tankers coming often to the area. The tenants on our property have decided to move out because of the water cuts and again, this will impact us financially.”

She said her family purchased water storage containers and a Jojo tank.

“We hoped that these items would make life more easy but they have not. The water in the Jojo tank finishes quickly.

“We need these issues to be resolved and proper solutions. Residents can no longer live like this. We have a right to basic services.”

Tim Jeebodh, a retired councillor and resident, said residents were reliant on non-profit organisations like the

Gift of the Givers and the Al-Imdaad Foundation.

“Water tankers aren’t sent to the areas that are affected. The organisations supply bottled water to residents every day. They also send water tankers and have dug boreholes for residents.

“They are doing the jobs of the municipality.”

He said there were a number of elderly people in the community who were not able to carry buckets of water.

“Most of the youngsters have moved out of Estcourt for better employment opportunities. Their parents have chosen to remain in the community and now have to fend for themselves.

“At my home, I have a Jojo tank. I use the water for my family, and I share it with my neighbours.”

Jeebodh said previously these issues were unheard of.

“As a councillor, I worked with the municipality. We never had the situation get so bad and serious. This is a crisis.”

Kishuar Dayanand, 57, has been diagnosed with cancer. He uses a barrel to transport water to his home from the borehole.

“It has been tough for us over these months. We are still waiting for a solution. I make three trips a day to the borehole. I fill up eight 5-litre plastic containers, place them in my barrel and push them home. We use this for the toilet and bathing.”

Dayanand lives with his wife, also 57. He has a son studying in Durban and another living in the US.

“We are spending more money on drinking water. We attend meetings hoping for some change, but despite providing information of our challenges, the situation does not improve.”

Rogers Alwar, 70, is a retired teacher and lives with his wife, 64.

“I have a bakkie and every day I fill water from the borehole. I fill water in three 20-litre containers, 15 containers that are 5-litres, and three 10-litre containers. We need it for cleaning, bathing and the toilet. We also invested in a Jojo tank and it’s costly to maintain. We are trying to deal with the situation the best we know how but it’s difficult.”

Javeed Khan, a volunteer at the Gift of Givers, said he used a trailer with tankers to distribute water.

“We do this every day from street to street. The situation is dire. It’s sad to see old men and women wait for

water and struggle to carry the buckets into their homes. We try to assist them when we can.

“We have children also standing in line to help their parents. We currently have a borehole at a mosque in Foderville. We are drilling two more boreholes outside Rensburg Drift.”

Osman Naeem Khan, who manages the water and sanitation department of the Al-Imdaad Foundation, said they had two boreholes in Foderville and one in the Estcourt CBD.

“We hand out 5-litre and 500ml water to communities every day. We

also have two water tankers that are sent out. When the Estcourt Hospital did not have water, patients could not take their medication.

“Over three days, we distributed 180 lots of 5-litre bottled water and 400 lots of 500ml bottled water to the hospital.

“The water has now been restored. It’s a difficult time for the town and we are trying our best to assist.”

Earlier this month the DA submitted a petition to the uThukela District Municipality calling for answers.

Thys Janse van Rensburg, the DA uThukela District councillor, said apart from residents, the regional hospital had been caught up in intermittent bulk water supply issues for more than five days.

“This has hampered health care, as water is not only life but also the principalagent for hygiene and health care. Many of Estcourt’s communities and neighbourhoods, like Colita and Foderville, have been plagued by continuous water outages.

“This is the most recent such prolonged water outage event that seems to be becoming an almost monthly occurrence of late in the major towns of Ladysmith and Estcourt.”

He said calls to the uThukela District Municipality to improve water service delivery and communication during times of crisis, seemed to be ignored.

“It’s apparent that the lack of basic services that have been plaguing the rural communities of uThukela are now also encroaching on the urban areas of the region.

“As the DA in uThukela, we realised earlier that the administration process invoked by the provincial ANC in 2018 would not be able to normalise service delivery in uThukela, as it was the prior decade of ANC mismanagement that brought us to these empty taps.”

Jabulani Mkhonza, the communications manager for the uThukela District Municipality, said water shortages in Estcourt Hospital and the surrounding areas were mainly caused by ageing infrastructure.

“We have had pump failures two times in two weeks that we managed to resolve within 12 hours, although our turnaround time is 48 hours.”

He said the area had about five burst pipes from the pumping main to the hospital, which also contributed to water shortages.

“We had previously advised the hospital to construct its own 48-hour storage tank to prevent unplanned interruptions, while the municipality is also in a process of refurbishing the Archie Rodell plant and replacing the ageing bulk and reticulation network.”

Mkhonza said the recent floods also compounded the situation where silt was deposited into the gravity line, negatively affecting on the water supply.

“Water tankers are distributed to affected areas but it must be noted that they are not enough to service a large number of communities on a daily basis, hence they are being rotated.

“The uThukela District Municipality has since appointed an engineer to conduct a feasibility study, source funds and replace the old infrastructure.”