Following the recurring water outages in Grahamstown, the mayor says restoring the city’s continued water supply is number one on the municipality’s list of priorities for this year.
Following the recurring water outages in Grahamstown, the mayor says restoring the city’s continued water supply is number one on the municipality’s list of priorities for this year.
In an exclusive interview with Grocott’s Mail this week, mayor Vumile Lwana attributed the municipality’s inability to respond promptly to water outages to the absence of a manager in its water services department. Former incumbent Martha Letsoalo resigned from the municipality in October just before she was going to be fired for incompetency.
Lwana said the municipality has advertised the vacancy but could not say when the post will be filled. “We can’t continue like this without a head, the workers’ reporting lines are blurred,” he explained. “Things are running on an ad hoc basis with no maintenance plan.”
He added that the municipality’s expenditure on maintenance is “not convincing because they fix a pipe here and a valve there as they go along. We need to say we have x amount of money to spend on infrastructure.”
He said the municipality has to fence its dams and spend money on the “skilling of our technicians”. He vowed to break the municipality’s trend of underspending on its allocation of the Municipal Infrastructure Grant. “No money will be returned to the Treasury this year as has been the case in the previous financial years,” he said.
Lwana said the council has to take a bank loan to finance the revamp of its water reticulation infrastructure. “The issue is still under discussion but there is consensus among the councillors on the urgent need for the loan.”
Lwana also said the municipality needs to research the matter extensively before the decision is implemented. “When we do decide on the matter we’ll obviously have to go public about the decision," he said.
Lwana said he is impressed with the municipality’s power distribution and that they will continue maintaining the electricity infrastructure.
Lwana said the installation of bulk services in Mayfield Phase 2 is currently under way and will be followed with the installation of water reticulation infrastructure. He added that the construction of houses in Transit Camp will begin soon alongside the completion of housing developments in Fingo Village and Eluxolweni.
He also said the eradication of the bucket system in Extension 6 and lower Albany Road will be completed by the end of the month as tenders have already been awarded for the job.
“We will thereafter eradicate pit toilets in Hlalani Location because the situation there is completely chaotic…” he said. He added that in the next financial year, which starts on 1 July, the municipality will eradicate pit toilets in another section of Extension 6.
Lwana remains critical of the attitude of some municipal officials who do not “value” residents as customers. “If we are to roll out a performance management system, we need to transform the minds of public servants so that they put the needs of their customers first as part of their daily performance,” he said.
Lwana condemned the unrests that were experienced in Nathaniel Nyaluza and DD Siwisa schools last year, saying: “We can’t allow such disruptions to go unabated. We need to ensure that learning takes place on the first day of schooling at these schools.”
He said he will “mobilise” community leaders to solve the principal issue at Ntsika Secondary School. The school has been without a principal since former principal Nobuzwe Singatha’s retirement in 2008.
