This morning the leadership and management, including officials led by the Honourable Mayor of UThukela District Municipality Inkosi NB Shabalala, visited the Ezakheni Water Treatment Works on a fact-finding mission relating to widespread water interruptions. This comes after many parts of Alfred Duma Local Municipality, and other municipalities were left without continuous water supply for over a week or so.
The water supply was interrupted as a result of worker-related issues. It also appeared that the Acting Municipal Manager, Mr MB Mnguni and Area Engineers were not aware of these issues, and he took it upon himself to resolve the stand-off. Some of these issues were then resolved.
The management will continue to engage with workers on other employee-related matters that need to be ironed out. The date of the meeting was set for the next Monday.
During today’s meeting, the affected parties reached a consensus that the Acting Municipal Manager will facilitate the payment of all outstanding overtime today. On the other hand, it was agreed that workers would go back to work and switch on the pumps. Before the engagement was concluded, Operators then went to the Abattoir Hill Reservoir, which supplies water in town and Aasvoelkop Reservoir, which supplies Ezakheni, to switch on the pumps. As we speak, all pumps are running.
Affected communities are therefore envisaged to receive water back to normal supply from this afternoon and right up tomorrow. On behalf of the Council and Management, the UThukela District Municipality would like to unreservedly apologize to the whole community that was affected by this predicament. We do understand their frustration with not having a water supply.
