Civil society groups from eThekwini’s south-western townships believe the city’s water supply is being deliberately withheld to their area.
Residents of the city are grappling with ongoing water curtailments imposed by the national water and sanitation department.
This meant provincial bulk water authority Umgeni-Uthukela Water had to reduce its supply to the municipality by 8.4% from September to October.
Residents who protested in Durban on Monday told TimesLIVE they were receiving less water than other areas with which they share reservoirs.
“We have a serious problem regarding our south-western area and the supply of the southern aqueduct water to our 8-12 reservoirs in that area,” said Puran Jankipershad, head of water and sanitation for the Chatsworth and District Federation.
“We’re fully aware of the restrictions that apply at the moment but we have areas that go 20-25 days without water while there are other areas, fed by the same southern aqueduct, that have water all the time. We’re firstly under restrictions but on top of that we still don’t get water even within those restrictions.”
Jankipershad was among a group of activists representing six wards around Chatsworth which marched to the eThekwini Water and Sanitation Unit (WSU) on Monday to call for a meeting with the unit’s technical team.
On Monday, President Cyril Ramaphosa authorised the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) to investigate allegations of maladministration in eThekwini municipality’s WSU between January and February.
Pastor Michael Padayachee, a community leader and one of the organisers of the march, said the water outages sometimes last for 24 hours with inconsistent distribution of water tankers to the communities.
He said they have sent numerous emails asking for a meeting with the city over the last year, none of which were responded to.
He added they are only interested in speaking to technical teams who perform day-to-day operations “on the ground” and not the unit head, Ednick Msweli.
“Our purpose is to meet the engineers, the telemetry operators, the operation guys on the ground because we don’t believe the likes of Ednick Msweli will sort out our problems and we’re not prepared to meet him because they become messenger boys.
“We want a technical team from the water department so we can get a team from our side who understand the situation and technicalities. We want operational people who can give us answers.”
The organisation has a technical committee made up of about 10 professionals who they believe can find a solution with the municipality.
Another activist and organiser Morgan Nair said the municipality and ward councillors of affected areas should be ashamed communities had to take the initiative to call a meeting to find a solution.
He said he would not dismiss the possibility of “crisis” being a deliberate ploy by some in the city leadership to help people connected to them benefit from water-related tenders.
“We’re asking eThekwini to sit in a meeting with us and explain to us why is it that certain individual areas are victimised. Is it because the colour of our skin or maybe it’s because a large majority of non-water paying members are from our communities? We need to know.
“We believe there is a solution but unfortunately the current hierarchy is actually doing this only for their own gain and it’s becoming political.”
The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday.
TimesLIVE
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