Filthy and fed up, residents take action

FILTHY and fuming Durban residents say they’ve had enough of the water shortages and are gearing up for protest action.

As the mercury soared past 30 degrees this week and with it the accompanying humidity, thousands were left without a drop of water and no tanker in sight.

From Savannah Park to Moseley and Northdene to uMhlanga, residents were confronted by taps that had run dry and no clear end to the current crisis.

While some had to endure 10 days without water, for others it was 30 days and counting.

As rumblings of protest action reverberated across the city, Ish Prahladh from the eThekwini Ratepayers and Residents Association said it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep communities calm amid the ongoing water outages.

“We're trying to keep them calm and we’ve had some protests but if nothing happens we are going to be walking into City Hall next week.”

He said residents couldn't rely on the municipality and were getting help from local businesses who were hiring tankers to get water to the people.

“They’re saying this reservoir is low, that reservoir is low, but not giving us proper answers. The municipality is supposed to have 100 new tankers but they are sending tankers erratically. They really don't know what they are doing.”

As the water tankers failed to pitch and people became more desperate it emerged that the municipality might have run out of money and could not pay to fill the tankers with diesel.

It came as the news broke that the council had also exceeded its budget for plumbers which meant that the many leaks across the city could not be fixed.

Residents in the Northdene, Queensburgh and Moseley areas have been complaining about dozens of water leaks for months, saying there was more water leaking onto the streets than coming out of their taps.

Multiple leaks in uMhlanga and La Lucia were also not attended to and DA councillor Bradley Singh said that he had reported the leaks but was told that no plumbers were available.

Angry residents continued to vent their frustration on neighbourhood WhatsApp groups.

“Who could blatantly just ignore the crisis we have for 34 days. The severity of the situation has passed the desperation stage. So many promised interventions and ideas and nothing sufficed or was good enough in all this time. Must there be loss of life to get some attention?”

Residents have also been begging to meet with eThekwini Mayor Cyril Xaba for several weeks without success. “We are not asking anymore, we are demanding this meeting with the mayor, if he has such a callous attitude to our lives then he must come tell us to our face,” a resident posted on one of the groups.

As the municipality’s excuses started to dry up, the water crisis spread to homes and schools in the Upper Highway area.

Roland Lacock the headmaster of Highbury Preparatory School in Hillcrest said that the school had been without water for about ten days and had reached out to various people to determine what the problem was and the timeline for it to be fixed, but the municipality had not responded.

“We've noticed for the last couple of months there's been a reduced amount of water pressure in the system. And in the last ten days there's been no water at all. So to function as a school with 630 children and 120 staff, we've resorted to having to get tankers to come and fill up our school reservoir in order to keep toilets flushing and the school open.”

Lacock said buying water for the school was turning out to be very costly exercise.

“Our school demands about 20 000 litres of water a day to function, and there are only about 16 000 litres of water for each of those trucks. So we have had only a tiny little bit of water compared to what our demand is. And so we've had to pay private companies to come and fill up our container to keep the school running, which is adding an extreme cost to the functioning of our school,” he said.

Lacock said the situation was becoming critical and they were worried about disease especially in the high temperatures the city was experiencing. “The lack of real information from the municipality is greatly concerning.”

Raj Kemraj the principal of Hillcrest Primary School said it was “hectic” because they’ve had water supply issues for at least two weeks. However, because of the constant supply problems with water and electricity the school had planned ahead and already had two boreholes, a 40 000 litre tank and JoJo's in all its toilets. They were also in the process of working towards a permanent solution which would ensure that even if there was an interruption in the water supply, the toilets would still function.

“The issue is clean drinking water. We are appealing to our parents to send water with the children, but there's only so much they can send. You know, with these extremely hot days and our sport in the afternoons, that’s always been a problem.”

Kemraj said they were also in the process of procuring JoJo's specifically for drinking water because they didn't want to use the borehole water and in the next few days that would be in place.

The provincial education department said it was not aware of any schools who were affected by the water shortages, or where they had to close or send pupils home early. Spokesman Muzi Mahlambi but it was the prerogative of the school and the circuit manager to make the decision based on the situation.

The municipality had not responded to questions by the time of going to press.