Durban - A call has been made for the eThekwini Municipality to urgently make funding and teams available to restore water supply in communities that have been left without water, some for weeks on end.
The DA's caucus leader in eThekwini, Nicole Graham, said communities across Durban have suffered ongoing and persistent outages, compromising their ability to keep clean and reduce their risk of catching the deadly Covid-19 virus.
She said said last week, council approved additional funding of R310 million for the Water and Sanitation Unit’s maintenance budget.
"The unit had run out of budget to pay plumbers and buy spares, leaving it unable to attend to bursts and other water outages. Problems with the water unit have been ongoing for an extended period of time, with many communities failing to get a stable supply of water from the municipality. In addition to this, the latest figures show that the municipality is losing 52% of its billable water to theft and bursts. This is absolutely astounding," Graham said.
She said the additional funding requested has now been approved by council and the problems should be attended to.
"It is simply unacceptable that communities are under lockdown but don’t have water, especially when they cannot move around or access water elsewhere. There have also been ongoing problems with refuse, leaving many communities filthy. Basic hygiene and handwashing are critical to stopping the spread of covid-19, and this cannot be maintained without running water and regular refuse collection," Graham said.