Many Barkly West community members have been forced to collect water from the overflowing Vaal River due to Dikgatlong Municipality’s failure to provide them with clean drinking water.
DESPERATE Barkly West community members have been forced to collect water from the overflowing Vaal River due to Dikgatlong Municipality’s failure to provide them with clean drinking water.
The community has been without water for a week already and they say they have not received any updates from the municipality on when their water woes will end.
The hospital and clinic are struggling, while businesses and schools, where teachers are still marking exam papers, are also complaining.
The town’s numerous water problems range from burst pipes, load shedding and cable theft-related outages to a lack of generators to use as a back-up.
It is believed that the challenges started when the municipality began diverting the water from the old pipeline to the new pipeline.
The community also suspects that some of the water cuts are due to sabotage.
The DA stated that it had warned Dikgatlong Municipality in October about the likelihood of a dry summer due to the water challenges.
DA Member of Parliament Delmaine Christians said that promises were subsequently made by the municipal manager to the MEC for Co-operative Governance, Human Settlements and Traditional Affairs (Coghsta) that a generator would be provided to mitigate the effects of load shedding on the water supply.
The DA also submitted a complaint to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) based on residents’ right to the sustainable provision of water being violated.
Christians explained that the service provider seems to be battling to connect the water system to the new pipeline.
“As pipes are repaired or replaced, other pipes burst. It is clear that the contractor responsible for the pipeline needs assistance, but this is not being addressed,” said Christians.
“We then asked why they don’t rather go back to the old pipeline, because it is still active. The communities are suffering and we are not getting any updates.
“We have learned that two generators arrived at the municipality yesterday, but the municipal call centre was apparently warned not to give any updates, especially to the opposition parties.”
Christians added that some of the residents managed to get water in the morning but the allocation was again interrupted due to cable theft.
According to Christians, the municipality only has two water trucks which are filled once a day to allocate water to residents.
“Some wards did not get any water at all for a week and do not know when they will get water.
“Some residents can’t afford to buy purified water and they collect water from the river. We already have two people who drowned in that river. We also know that sewage flows into that river.”
A frustrated Barkly West resident, Pieter Botha, said their lives had turned into a nightmare since September.
He said they tried to engage with the municipality when the problem started, but they are “just getting empty promises”.
Botha said that when the problems started, they would get water from 5am to 9am, now they get nothing.
“Just when we learned that the new generators have arrived to relieve the problems, we heard there was cable theft. We had our hopes up that the dams will be filled and we will have water. We expected to have water running from our taps, but nothing yet,” Botha added.
“Our homes are stinking. We don’t even know where the water trucks are. Someone spotted the two trucks passing here and we have been waiting ever since.”
