By ROD AMNER
Makhandans received an apology from Deputy Minister of Human Settlement, Water and Sanitation David Mahlobo in a Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA) portfolio committee oversight meeting in Parliament this week.
He said he was “ashamed” of the decade-long delays besetting the upgrade of the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works and bemoaned the past weakness of the implementing agent, Amatola Water.
“We apologise to Makhanda – we denied them the right to water,” he said.
He promised to accelerate the project completion, now set for June 2023.
“Your dignity will be restored,” Mahlobo vowed.
Phase 2 will be fast-tracked to ensure water output will double from ten megalitres a day to twenty by the end of June 2023. A new contractor will be on-site by the end of November and will be asked to observe a shortened closing period during the festive season.
Phase 3 of the project is to be completed in December 2023, but this will not affect the supply of additional water. This phase includes the installation of a drainage pipe to prevent flooding of the pump station and fencing.
Amatola Water’s provincial head Portia Makanya told COGTA the three phases of the Kleynhans project would cost over R400 million.
But, writing in the Zoom chat forum of the meeting, Rhodes Computer Science professor and community activist Philip Machanick told COGTA to “go back to 2010, and you will find a lot more than the R400 million for this project reported by Amatola – it is more like R600 million”.
Amatola Water Board Chairperson Pam Yako said their initial estimate for the completion of Phase 2 was August 2023. “This was not acceptable to Makana,” Yako said. “They asked us to look at accelerating the procurement process.
Makana Municipality Executive Mayor Yandiswa Vara confirmed that the municipality had raised its “dissatisfaction” with Amatola Water at a meeting on 1 October. “There is nothing we can do to change the situation right now. We are happy with the fast-tracking and the turnaround they have proposed. We are hoping that by December, there will be some improvement. We are in a bad situation – our communities blame Makana Municipality,” Vara said.
Meanwhile, Amatola Water’s Yako offered operational assistance to Makana to deal with operational challenges currently besetting the city’s western water supply.
“We are unsure of the challenges and needs, which requires a conversation with the technical team. But once the assessment happens, we will look at deploying support,” she said. This includes leaks on the rising line between Howieson’s Poort Dam and the Waainek Water Treatment Works, as well as other problems which sprang up this week at the dam and the treatment works.
Makhanda Circle of Unity project manager Sakhe Ntlabezo urged Amatola Water, Makana and the Department of Water and Sanitation to hold a Town Hall meeting to engage the broader community directly on the delays, the financial breakdowns and the projected plans to address the gaps.
“This is vital, particularly for deeply impacted community members, to hear directly from the bodies involved on how these challenges will be navigated,” Ntlabezo said.
Amatola Water’s Pam Yako said she welcomed the idea of giving feedback to Makhandans. “We are willing to explain the technical elements,” she said.
Timelines
Phase 2 of the project was terminated on 2 June 2022. Procurement of a replacement contractor commenced on 27 July 2022 and was cancelled on 27 September 2022. A new bid was advertised on 6 October 2022 and closed on 27 October 2022. Bid evaluation committee meetings were on 2 November 2022, and the bid adjudication committee meeting will happen today (4 November). It is hoped the contractor will be appointed by the end of November.
Criticism
Philip Machanick told COGTA Makhanda is a “high-skill community, with top engineers and a university with significant skills”, yet the municipality is “resistant to outsiders’ advice”.
“You cannot pin the blame on one side. It is convenient to blame Amatola Water because they have new leadership. But municipal dysfunction is a big part of the problem.
“In January 2019, we were promised that the previously failed project would be fast-tracked. A year later, only one phase (refurbishing the original plant) was done. If the current timeline is adhered to, it will be four years from that original promise before completion,” he said.
“It is not just water out for two days; some people are without water for a week or more. And this has been going on for years, it is not a new thing.
“For the poor, this is very hard – they can’t go out and buy a rain tank or buy water from Pick’ n Pay every day.
“Water shedding is a terrible idea for two reasons. It affects areas unevenly because of the way water is distributed, and repeatedly shutting the system off stresses the system.
“The way water is distributed, lower levels still have plenty when higher levels run dry. This can be remedied with zonal valves. These were installed on a previous project and are not used. If you look back over all the projects, the promises are always the same and are always broken.
“Is this the first time Mamlambo has failed to deliver a contract on time (Phase 1 was delayed)? What due diligence has been performed on the replacement contractor? Add to this what is happening with failures in running the local grid, and it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the dysfunction is deliberate,” he wrote.
“A forensic audit of the processes in awarding and supervising contracts is long overdue, both at Amatola and the municipality. Who benefits from dysfunction? Answer: anyone who benefits from awarding a contract and who therefore benefits from repeating it when it fails.”
“The big question. Where is effective oversight? We have visits from CoGTA, DWS and AG, who absolutely pan the municipality (and now Amatola Water is in the spotlight). Yet things are actually getting worse,” Machanick said.
Makhanda’s water system – an explainer
Amatola Water’s Portia Makhanya explained that Makhanda had two independent raw water sources for its bulk water storage and water treatment, known as the Waainek or western system and the James Kleynhans or eastern system. The two systems are interconnected to allow the transfer of water between them, enabling the municipality to meet the current demand of 18 megalitres daily. However, the municipality had to rely on the eastern side due to current operational challenges on the western system. She said that water shedding is inevitable as such reservoirs are allowed to fill.
Water from the western system is treated at the Waainek Water Treatment Works with a capacity of eight megaliters a day. This system mainly serves the town area (including surrounding private schools, prison, hospitals and Rhodes University, and primarily high-lying areas) and gets water from the
Settlers and Howieson’s Poort dams. Due to the severe drought and current pipe bursts, the Waainek system has not been operating at full capacity.
The eastern system is not affected by the current drought as it is supplied by the Lower Orange Fish Government Water Scheme through various canal and river systems and stored at Glen Melville Dam, which feeds the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works (which mainly serves the township).
The JKWTW is a ten Mℓ/day plant, but due to the shortage of treated water on the western side, Makana had to push the plant’s treatment capacity to between 10 and 13 Mℓ/day to transfer water to the western side of Makhanda.
The JKWTW is being upgraded to provide 20 Mℓ/day treated water. The Department of Water and Sanitation is funding this project through the Regional Bulk Infrastructure, and the Amatola Water board is the implementing agent.
