ANC Chief Whip Julia Wells has called on the municipality to invoke the Constitution and force a reluctant national government to hand over the cash Makana needs to fix its water.
ANC Chief Whip Julia Wells has called on the municipality to invoke the Constitution and force a reluctant national government to hand over the cash Makana needs to fix its water.
Wells was speaking at a special council meeting to discuss the water crisis. A document tabled at the 23 December meeting suggested that until the City sorts out its finances, it won’t receive funding through national government sources.
A report from the Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission (PICC), dated 28 November 2013, describes the lack of progress made on an action plan agreed to between the PICC, Makana Municipality and Rhodes University.
“Though there are actions being reported, none of them seems to have resulted in the actual resolution of the water crisis… the pump is reported as having been order[ed]. However, it appears the required R500 000 deposit has not been paid by the Local Municipality, and as such work on the pump has not begun,” reads one item in a litany of lack of action.
Also high on the Commission’s agenda was communication with Makana’s citizens.
“A communication plan was requested… such a plan was not given to the PICC at the time of the visit, nor has it been submitted subsequent to the visit. It appears, as there has been no report handed over as requested, that such a plan does not exist.”
And despite the disclaimer that the report “should not under any circumstances be read as a general comment on the general state of affairs of the Local Municipality”, it states, “it seems reasonable to hold the view that this Local Municipality’s financial position needs further scrutiny. Until such scrutiny has been completed it does not seem appropriate to fund this Local Municipality to resolve this current Water Crisis.”
In a debate during the pre-Christmas Council meeting, Wells said the municipality should invoke Chapter 7 of the Constitution, which deals with local government municipalities in co-operative government. Section 154. (1) obliges the national and provincial governments, by legislative and other measures, to “support and strengthen the capacity of municipalities to manage their own affairs, to exercise their powers and to perform their functions”.
The municipality has signed on Amatola Water to help resolve the water crisis. While some money for immediate fixes has been found thanks to the Department of Water Affairs, Cacadu District Municipality and the Department of Local Government and Traditional Affairs, among the expenses Amatola has quoted is more than R16.9-million to refurbish the Waainek and James Kleynhans water treatment works and two pump stations. This amount doesn't even touch on the cost of fixing the city’s water reticulation systems, which is not in Amatola’s mandate.
Meanwhile, high-lying areas in Grahamstown can expect water outages for several hours on Sunday 12 January, as technicians shut down the Howieson’s Poort pump station.
In a statement yesterday the municipality said it had met this week with the Department of Water Affairs to assess the progress made in dealing with the water crisis.
Grocott’s Mail watched staff from Amatola Water battled on Christmas Eve in 30-degree heat to set up a system to clear sludge from several clarifier ponds at the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works.
The clarifiers, a system of sieves, are the first in a long chain of infrastructure that Amatola Water must resolve in order to solve Grahamstown’s water problems.
Grocott’s Mail visited both the city’s pump stations – at Glen Melville Dam and Howieson’s Poort – as well as the James Kleynhans water treatment works.
