Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality
Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality says it is working around the clock to repair all water leaks as the City's supply dam levels dwindled to just 12.06% of combined storage capacity.
In a statement, the Metro said it fixed more than 600 leaks this week.
As of 28 February, Nelson Mandela Bay said there were 1 723 outstanding water leaks that needed to be fixed, compared to the 5 260 recorded at the end of January.
The head of the Directorate for Infrastructure and Engineering, Dries van der Westhuizen, said the recent recruitment of 79 plumbers, who focused on households of beneficiaries of the Assistance To The Poor Programme, yielded some positive results.
He also said the 200 water ambassadors deployed by the Metro to conduct door-to-door education and awareness drives had also helped identify leaks in people's homes.
"This enables the Metro to respond quicker. We encourage our residents to welcome the plumbers and ambassadors and protect them too as they go around in the different wards across the Metro," Van der Westhuizen added.
He said their target was to clear the remaining backlog by the end of the week, "but due to ageing infrastructure, the target continues to move."
Meanwhile, ANC councillor Bulelani Mathenjwa slated the Municipality for contributing to the water crisis, claiming that there were no contractors on site to fix water leaks in his ward and other wards for the past three to four weeks.
He told a Council meeting on Tuesday that the Metro needed to get its own house in order before asking residents to save water.
"We had one contractor that was dealing with Kwadwesi and Motherwell as a whole. Recently I was speaking to the Department and they said we don't have plumbers, but now we are preaching that people must save water but our own Municipality does not have the capacity to do that," he added.
At the same meeting, all Councillors pledged their support for a business and funding plan that will focus on investigating the City's water infrastructure as proposed by the National Department of Water and Sanitation and National Treasury.
Council also passed the 2022/2023 adjustment budget which allows for funds from the Directorates of Safety and Security and Sanitation to be shifted to the Water Services Directorate.
Nelson Mandela Bay has reiterated its call to residents to save water as daily water consumption is still high at 272 million litres per day, way above the required 230 million litres per day.
