Note to Broadcasters: Please find attached soundbites in English and Afrikaans by Cornel Dreyer
The DA in Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality today wrote letters to the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Pemmy Majodina, as well as to the MEC of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs, Oageng Molapisi, requesting urgent action to be taken in the continuous water failures in Ramotshere Moiloa Local Municipality.
The constant water outages are caused by an inadequate and failing water reticulation infrastructure. The absence of adequate pressure pumps in the reticulation network relates to huge portions of Zeerust suffering with no piped water available for extended periods of time.
Current reticulation networks predate 1994 and have seen no developmental expansion to the reservoirs or network despite the massive growth in population of Zeerust.
Despite the DA’s persistant reporting of the water infrastructure failures and outages to the relevant municipal department, the call of the people falls on deaf ears. The turnaround time for crisis management repairs regularly surpasses 24 hours as the necessary clamps and pipes are not readily available.
If the municipality does act and repairwork is done, poor workmanship causes more pressure on the system; repairs normally leak or fail again within a short period of time.
Trenches and excavations are left open for long periods of time, hampering traffic flow and endangering the lives of residents in the immediate area.
The lack of planned maintenance and expansion to the network stresses the aged infrastructure, and a total collapse may be imminent.
In a DA-run municipality, proper developmental planning will ensure that the infrastructure is developed to keep up with urbanisation, and the lack of consequence management will not be tolerated.
Unite behind the DA to save our town.