Infrastructure neglect catches up with Msunduzi

Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla

Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla

Published Nov 27, 2020

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Durban – The Msunduzi Municipality is living on “borrowed time” as its ageing infrastructure is on the verge of collapse.

Residents fear they will be left without key services such as electricity and water.

Mayor Mzimkhulu Thebolla made the admission during an interview with The Mercury yesterday, as the city battles to recover from devastating storms that left it with R2.8 billion's damage.

The municipality’s failure to maintain or replace dilapidated infrastructure has finally caught up with them.

A report on the infrastructure damage was presented by municipal manager Madoda Khathide to councillors this week, as he sought permission to approach the provincial government to declare the city a disaster area.

Heavy rains, lightning and thunderstorms, accompanied by hail the size of golf balls, battered the city last week. This resulted in severe power outages and residents were without electricity for days. By Wednesday, the municipality was still busy restoring supply to some of its areas.

“We are living on borrowed time. If the weather changes, we get worried about what might happen; two of our substations are just gone,” said Thebolla.

“The storm caused a lot of damage to our infrastructure, as I speak now, I am not sure whether all the people that were left in darkness after the power went out, have been connected back.”

Thebolla said the City had resorted to desperate measures to reconnect those who had been without power by “loading” its transformers to carry more people.

“A transformer that was connecting 10 people, is now connecting 50. In factories we are supposed to have a reserve line in case there is an outage, so we are able to connect the factories immediately, but at the moment, we do not have that,” he said.

Thebolla said they hoped the provincial government would move speedily in declaring the city a disaster area to release rescue funds needed to begin the recovery.

“One of the things we had prioritised was the maintenance and making additions to our grid (connect more people), now we can’t do any additions as we have to move back and fix what has been damaged,” he said.

The report on the storm damage revealed the extent of the damage to electricity infrastructure, roads and municipal buildings.

“Several families suffered after hailstorms, equivalent to the size of the golf balls battered villages, suburbs and the CBD.

“Municipal networks including electricity, roads, water and sanitation infrastructure were severely affected. Some of the residents were left without electricity and water for several days while others are still battling to have access to municipal services,” the report said.

The estimated costs of replacing the damaged infrastructure was R2.8bn, which is not budgeted for, said the report.

The breakdown of the damage showed the municipality would need more than R800 million to address the damage to the electricity infrastructure, about R1bn for roads, R350m for water and sanitation.

It would need about R67m to repair damage to the AS Chetty building and R75m to fix the leak on the City Hall roof.

DA councillor Sibongiseni Majola said the problems were a long time coming because of lack of maintenance and investment on infrastructure.

“There is a report that we get every month that details how the municipality is performing, on every norm that is set by the national treasury, we are falling behind.

“We are behind on cash, cash coverage, collections and maintenance, and that is what led us to this.”

He said the infrastructure was already overloaded as it was built to accommodate a small population and nothing new had been built despite the amount of people drawing services having increased.

The Mercury

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