On Friday Makana Mayor Vumile Lwana devoted a part of his address at the opening of council to the serious
water crisis facing this municipality.
He is obviously concerned about the effects of the prolonged drought on our community and said that the Municipal Manager’s office is currently working on a Save our Water campaign.
On Friday Makana Mayor Vumile Lwana devoted a part of his address at the opening of council to the serious
water crisis facing this municipality.
He is obviously concerned about the effects of the prolonged drought on our community and said that the Municipal Manager’s office is currently working on a Save our Water campaign.
At a special council meeting last month, Lwana astutely noted that, “We have reached a crisis which we have never experienced before.”
At that same meeting he said that since the dams serving Grahamstown West have virtually dried up, the western parts of town have to drink water from the samesource that serves Grahamstown East.
Yet since the system has been changed, said the mayor, some Grahamstown West residents have complained about the bad taste of the water.
Lwana then chastised those who complained because he said the residents of Grahamstown East never complained about their water before, so why should they?
The not very subtle insinuation here is that the spoilt people who live in Grahamstown West should shut up because the residents of Grahamstown East have been putting up with this (poor quality) water for a long time without complaining.
The Mayor’s reflex action to criticise those who complained about E. coli in the water is counter-productive. What he should be doing is asking his staff why the residents of Grahamstown East or the residents of everywhere in Makana Municipality are being forced to tolerate the mismanagement of the municipality’s water supplies.
Plans before council to raise R50-million to upgrade water and other infrastructure indicate that the council is aware of the gravity of the current situation.
A substantial chunk of these massive loans are destined to repairing and upgrading infrastructure that has been allowed to deteriorate for so long.
We hope that when we the taxpayers are paying for these loans that we will at least be drinking potable water.
