Fed-up with continuous water outages in their areas, Verulam, oThongathi, Phoenix and La Mercy residents held a march to the Durban City Hall on Thursday.
Verulam Water Crisis Committee, Tongaat Civic Association, the Phoenix Civic and Ratepayers’ Association and the La Mercy Concerned Citizens group led the march.
Communities across the areas have been battling water shortages for several weeks or months.
“We are day 230 with no water in thousands of homes in the north of eThekwini Municipality,” said Roshan Lil-Ruthan, chairperson for the Verulam Water Crisis Committee.
He said that with this march, residents had made the call to demand the fulfilment of their basic rights.
“The significance of the march and sit-in at City Hall is that today is Human Rights Day and tomorrow is World Water Day. Two significant impact days in our country and the world. Importantly, we are enforcing our very own constitutional right to water, which is a declared human right,” said Lil-Ruthan.
The residents held up signs outside the City Hall, demanding that their grievances be heard.
A statement by the Verulam Water Crisis Committee also raised the issue of irregular municipal billing.
“We demand the cancellation of all irregular bills that burden our community unfairly. We refuse to be subjected to financial exploitation when we are simply asking for access to a resource that is rightfully ours,” the committee said.
The vice-chairperson of the Tongaat Civic Association, Tashya Giyapersad, said residents were promised that they would have running water in their taps by February 15.
“Obviously that date has come and long gone, and also it was overtaken by the municipal strike that took place.
Now we have given them 7 days to come back to us with a viable plan,” she said.
She also said that having this march on Human Rights Day was significant because water is a human right.
“We believe that water has become a political tool, it is an instrument to either violate people’s rights or a form of control and we want it to stop. We want people to have equal access to water and obviously sanitation and electricity, and those are the pressing issues we are facing,” said Giyapersad.
The eThekwini Municipality had previously said that the municipal strike had set back repair work being carried out on water infrastructure in the northern areas.
It added that water restoration was being prioritised.
The Mercury