An elderly resident’s death in a troubled Free State municipality while drawing water from a borehole dug by a humanitarian relief organisation has laid bare the council’s long-standing and as yet unresolved service delivery challenges.
Zachariah Lekgetho Mofokeng, 67, of ward 32 in the Maluti-a-Phofung local municipality, died two weeks ago on Wednesday October 30, after collapsing while pushing a wheelbarrow to draw water from a borehole donated by Gift of the Givers in the Makwane area, which is located a few kilometres from his home.
Some of his neighbours told the Sunday Independent that at the time of Mofokeng’s death, the community had not had water since July this year.
The neighbours complained that the municipality’s failure to provide water has now cost lives.
One of the residents said the municipality did not assist the family except for a small food pack delivered by member of the mayoral committee (MMC) responsible for social development Mary Crocket.
”Also the MMC confirmed that it [Mofokeng’s death] was the fault of the municipality and apologised on behalf of the mayor and [Free State] premier [Maqueen Letsoha-Mathae] who is on leave,” a resident said this week.
A few days after Mofokeng died, 36 Maluti-a-Phofung ward (12) and proportional representation (14) councillors wrote to mayor Malekula Melato in an attempt to force her come up with contingency plans to address the serious service delivery challenges faced by residents.
The councillors said critical issues of provision of basic services have been neglected and, as a result, for an extended period of time communities in the municipality have suffered inadequate delivery of essential services.
According to the councillors, water supply is irregular and insufficient and that this has a severe impact on residents’ daily lives.
Melato told the councillors that in May this year council approved an unfunded budget with a deficit of about R31m.
”The municipality’s budget could not break even due to the budget allocation of electricity and water bulk purchases and the billing and collection rate is low due to, among others – tampering of electricity meters, the culture of non-payment, high electricity tariffs and other tariffs which are not cost reflective,” she explained.
Melato urged residents to reduce water consumption immediately and indicated that the municipality would start implementing a water rationing schedule to ensure that every household receives water.
She said the councillors’ concerns were being taken very seriously and the municipality was committed to addressing them in a timely and effective manner.
Among the challenges blamed for having hamstrung the municipality’s ability to deliver services are its more than R8.1 billion Eskom debt, and in last week’s special council meeting Melato also pointed fingers at climate change for the water crisis.
Meanwhile, the water scarcity that has plagued Maluti-a-Phofung has also hit several other municipalities across the country.
The City of Johannesburg and its entity Johannesburg Water this week announced the throttling of water supply at night between 9pm and 4am when the demand is low to enable reservoirs to recover and implement cut-offs of illegal connections in key informal settlements.
Angry residents of Phumlamqashi informal settlement near Lenasia, south of the city, protested following a Johannesburg Water operation to cut off illegally connected water.
Joburg’s water woes also adversely affected operations at the Constitutional Court in Hillbrow as it was unable to conduct physical or in-court case hearings and the water tank installed for ablution facilities only lasts for only one working day, with the municipality unable to refill it promptly and daily to allow court operations to continue uninterrupted.
The Office of the Chief Justice indicated that leaks in the court’s water system were also detected, further negatively impacting supply but this has since been addressed by a professional plumber deployed by the departments of public works and infrastructure and justice and constitutional development.
Sunday Independent