Durban — Phoenix residents on Tuesday took to the streets waving placards and voicing their concerns over prolonged poor service delivery of water and electricity.
Parts of Phoenix did not have a power supply for five days. There were also problems with the water supply.
Alice Govender, a community activist, said two different organisations held gatherings in Phoenix.
Govender said that in recent months Phoenix has been the poster child of poor service delivery in respect of refuse removal, load shedding and water rationing.
“eThekwini Municipality has much to answer for regarding the dismal, shameful service delivery to Phoenix. The City has been very vocal on promises to fix damaged infrastructure caused by the floods and lack of maintenance on infrastructure prior to the floods. However, the City has fallen short on its promises,” she said.
Govender said residents were diligently paying for water, electricity and refuse removal and not getting the service. “The community of Phoenix has now reached the tipping point of anger and frustration,” she said.
Phoenix Crime Community assistant administrator, Edwin Donovan, said: “It was heartbreaking to see an uncle on crutches and a cancer-stricken aunt standing up for Phoenix’s struggle for water and electricity.
“It was refreshing to see that this protest was not organised under a political banner. Our hope is that this will draw attention to the service delivery issue in Phoenix.”
Phoenix resident Charleen Jagroop said they usually have water shedding in Eastbury between 7pm and 5am but daily the water has been going off at 10am and coming back the next day. Jagroop said load shedding makes the problem worse.
“We come home from work with no water. They make our lives hell. It’s tiring to keep refilling water. We must still pay the bill for all the extra water we use. For months, we suffered with water shedding. They reduce the pressure so drastically that we are lucky to have a decent shower. It is a curse to live in Phoenix. Nowhere else has this problem,” Jagroop said.
DA constituency head for Phoenix, MPL Bradley Singh, said 23 substations had malfunctioned, which left most of Phoenix off the grid. Councillors should not shoulder the blame because they have been pushing for electricians to carry out the work, Singh said.
The torrential rainfall caused electricity substations to “blow up”.
Singh said the municipality did not have the human resources to repair these substations. He said the City was aware that when it rains the substations give in.
“We are putting pressure on the municipality to have teams on standby to avert prolonged outages; and also to prevent damage to the circuit and overloading power supply. Some substations have to be replaced.
“The Phoenix depot does not have the manpower and resources to conduct the repairs speedily. Some workers who were on holiday had to be called in to assist,” Singh said.
With regards to the water, Singh said, there were no water tankers assigned to the area. Singh said the councillors were flooded with calls because the eThekwini call centre was a nightmare to get through.
eThekwini Municipality spokesperson Msawakhe Mayisela said there was an interruption of water supply to some parts of Phoenix, Ntuzuma and Verulam, due to water rationing implemented because of a reduced water supply from Umgeni Water’s Durban Heights Water Treatment Plant to these reservoirs. The reduced water supply is a result of extensive damage to two raw water pipelines caused by the April floods.
Mayisela said the ongoing rationing was introduced to deal with the water supply challenge. A work schedule provided to Umgeni Water by the appointed contractor said repairs to the damaged pipes were expected to be completed by June 2023.
Daily News