Please find attached soundbites in English and Afrikaans by Retief Odendaal, MPL.
The inability of the Chris Hani District Municipality (CHDM) to provide water and sanitation to the people of Cradock is endangering lives and the unwillingness of the Department of Water and Sanitation to hold the Municipality to account makes it complicit.
The people of Cradock have endured desperate times over the past week as their taps ran dry for 5 days without notice. This was the result of repair work to a broken canal that channels water from the Great Fish River to the Geelbooi storage dams.
The 35 000 residents of Cradock had no warning and were not prepared for survival without water. This put them in harm’s way during a time when communities have to live as hygienically as possible in a bid to stop the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Despite the CHDM providing a number of water tankers to supply desperate residents with a few litres of potable water per day, the unplanned and unscheduled nature of the water distribution led to some community members fighting over access to water.
The level of incompetence shown by the CHDM in dealing with the situation is not an isolated event. In February this year, I approached the Minister for Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation, Lindiwe Sisulu, requesting her to appoint a Water Services Committee in terms of Section 51 of the Water Services Act of 1997. This would effectively mean that the water and sanitation competency would be removed from the CHDM.
More proof of the need for drastic intervention is the fact that the wastewater treatment works in Cradock and Middelburg are also still non-operational, causing raw sewage to flow into the Great Fish River and polluting water meant for human consumption.
When water finally starts flowing through all the taps again, it will be little consolation for Cradock residents, knowing that the very water they consume has been contaminated by the raw sewage from neighbouring Middelburg.
I have yet again written to the Minister of Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation, Lindiwe Sisulu, to bring the total collapse of water and sanitation services provided by the CHDM to her attention.
Because of Minister Sisulu’s seeming reluctance to take action against the CHDM, I have decided to compile a dossier, which will include all my correspondence to the Minister, and refer the matter to the South African Human Rights Commission within the next 7 days for further investigation.
The DA will not stand idly by while the lives of our people are being endangered by an uncaring ANC government. The Water and Sanitation Competency must be removed from Chris Hani District Municipality.