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The DA in uThukela District has written to the KwaZulu-Natal MEC for Education, Hon. Mbali Frazer to request urgent intervention in schools affected by water outages. View letter here.

As many schools across the province officially reopened for the 2023 academic year yesterday, some schools in uThukela had to endure their first day without water.

This as communities in Roosboom outside Ladysmith continue to block arterial roads including the R103, in protest to having no water for weeks.

These schools include Aloe Park and Ladysmith Secondary schools with approximately 2 500 learners combined.

The fact that the uThukela District Municipality region is in one of the wettest rainfall years in decades seems to elude the governing IFP. The water network is in a state of collapse. After their first year in Government, residents are acting out in anger as they have failed to improve upon the decade of mismanagement under the ANC that led before them.

Residents and learners in the district are casting their gaze down the road to our neighbouring uMgeni, where the DA’s government is showing how a municipality can be turned around, in record time if the political will revolves around the betterment of its people.

Water is life, and sanitation is dignity. It is becoming clear that the IFP in uThukela cannot afford neither.

Issued by Councillor Thys Janse van Rensburg - DA uThukela Chairperson