Durban - Municipal employees, charged with the responsibility of fixing broken infrastructure, are battling to attend to water leaks and burst pipes within the stipulated turnaround time, with its records showing that less than half the complaints get resolved within a 24-hour period.
A report, analysing the performance of eThekwini Municipality’s Water and Sanitation Department between July and September this year, tabled before the Human Settlements and Infrastructure Committee last week, detailed the municipality’s inability to address water leaks, burst pipes and meters and blocked sewers.
It found that the city had an average of 40% success in attending to leaks within 24 hours.
The lack of urgent response by city officials has been the subject of complaints by ratepayers and opposition parties who have argued this constituted a serious drain on municipal finances.
The report also showed there was no consistent improvement in the performance of municipal infrastructure this financial year, compared to the previous financial year. For example, in the month of September this year, there were more complaints of sewer blockages than there were at the same time last year.
The performance of this infrastructure, especially as it related to water leaks, has been raised repeatedly by the office of the auditor general who found the city lost huge reserves of water due to burst and leaking pipes.
The city also revealed to the national Portfolio Committee on Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs recently that it would need close to R21 billion to rehabilitate some of its ageing and dilapidated water infrastructure.
DA councillor Mzamo Billy said the latest monthly report reveals shocking statistics about the performance of the Water and Sanitation Unit.
Billy said the municipality Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the residents makes it clear that water leaks, burst pipes and sewage leaks should be attended to within 24 hours.
“We have received many complaints from community members between March when the national lockdown was first announced, up until September,” he said.
The report, which calculated leaks from July this year to September, found that there were 12 709 water operation leaks reported with 4 656 resolved within 24 hours, which equates to 37%.
There were 218 burst meter pipes in the same period and only 86 were resolved within 24 hours, which gives a 39% success rate.
The report also showed that there were 18 902 leaks reported in the same period and 7 325 were resolved in 24 hours, a success rate of 39%.
The city enjoyed more success in fixing pipe bursts as they were able to fix 75% of the faults within 24 hours. There were 2 953 bursts and 2 213 were fixed.
The report showed that since July this year, the municipality had received 10 404 sewer complaints and about 2 228 were resolved in 24 hours, a success rate of 21%.
“In the last council meeting, the DA submitted a motion that specifically asked for an investigation to be conducted in the functioning of the water and sanitation unit, in particular, the non-existent maintenance strategy. But this was mischievously voted against by the ANC councillors and subsequently rejected by council,” said Billy.
“Unfortunately, this latest report supports the DA’s position that the unit is dysfunctional and requires urgent intervention in order to save the much-needed revenue which is lost due to unattended leaks and burst pipes,” he said.
IFP caucus leader Mdu Nkosi said, “the main issue is that the infrastructure is very old. It’s been said before that the city needs money to fix some of the problems. Solving all these problems depends on whether you have the manpower.”
In its report, the municipality said part of the problem in its poor response to burst pipes was the lack of night plumbers. However, it said there has been a decrease in the numbers of pipes that burst in September (959) compared to the same period last year (1 045).
The municipality noted that regarding customer service leaks, the response has improved due to emphasis being placed on plumbers completing approximately three leaks per shift. It said 37% of reported leaks were responded to within 24 hours.
Analysing the number of sewer blockage complaints, the city received in the month of September, the report said there was an increase as compared to last year. In September this year, the municipality responded to 1 003 leaks as compared to 720 in the same period last year.
City spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela said the city has made tremendous progress with regard to its turnaround time when it comes to attending to leaking meters and burst pipes that have been reported within 24 hours.
“This is a significant improvement in light of the challenges that we have been experiencing in the past and the City will continue to keep the momentum after it has re-channeled its resources to focus largely on faults that have been reported within 24 hours.
“It is also elating to see that we are making a huge progress with regard to clearing all backlog in this regard and we encourage the public to continue to work with us by not only reporting these leaks, but also being vigilant and reporting those who are connecting to our infrastructure illegally and those who are vandalising it, he said.
Mercury