The DA in eThekwini will be calling for an emergency meeting with the Acting City Manager, Mr Musa Mbhele to table various concerns regarding sewage spills across the municipality.

This follows the DA’s two-day oversight inspections to assess the extent of the severe sewer spillages (view here, here and here).

The findings from the oversights are alarming with the spillages being tantamount to environmental crimes, human rights violations and ecological disasters.

Large parts of the city have been subjected to hundreds of thousands of litres of sewerage pouring within meters from people's homes, into rivers and the ocean, for months, some for years.

The city has not acted or displayed any sense of urgency in trying to remedy the series of very serious human rights and environmental contraventions. In fact, it appears to be quite the opposite, in that eThekwini Municipality appears to be is dragging its feet in repairing and upgrading critical infrastructure.

It is apparent that even with the new budget cycle, there is no tangible work in progress to prioritise or fast track even the critical sites.

It is unfathomable how city leadership and officials can ignore the inhumane conditions that people are living in, let alone the death knell for the biodiversity and ecology of our riverine systems and beaches.

EThekwini Water and Sanitation must be realistic about how much of budget they are actually planning to implement and whether they have made a concerted case to National treasury for additional funding that is required to remedy the dire situation in this Metro. In previous reports, eThekwini's water unit, declared that they needed at least R128 billion to fix the issues within water and sanitation.

Equally distressing is the admission that this would take between 33 years to 100 years to achieve. This is not what ratepayers expect or deserve from a municipality that postures itself as a world-class city and tourist destination.

It was very evident that the majority of spills were due to failed pump stations and main trunk pipeline breaches that simply could not cope with densification and expansion in the city, lack of preventative maintenance with the floods being the final straw.

Site upon site revealed that eThekwini had done very little and, in many places, people are expected to live normal lives preparing and consuming food while the thick stench of raw sewage and acrid gases fills the air.

Environmentalists, community activists and residents have had enough and are calling for the city to be declared a disaster Zone once again due to the epic proportions of the sewer spillages.

The ANC has allowed this world-class city to deteriorate into a cesspool that it has become abundantly clear that they are not equipped, adept nor has the remotest inclination or political will to fix this, in real time.

The trend in municipal budgeting, especially when it is adjusted, show lavish spending juxtaposed against poor budgeting for essential services while slashing budgets by up to 40% for trading services like water, electricity and refuse collection.

The DA will continue its oversight visits and hold city officials to account to ensure ratepayers are rendered with reliable service delivery that they deserve.

 

Issued by Councillor Thabani Mthethwa - DA eThekwini Caucus Leader