Water shortage in Maquassi Hills pose serious challenge for bucket eradication national target.
Media Alert
Theme: Save Maquassi Water Awareness Campaign
Southern District, Wolmaranstad, the community of Maquassi Hills in the Southern District municipality will be engaged by the Municipality council on interim solutions to collectively address the water problem that has emerged since 2001, and worsened late last year when residents taps ran dry. The Southern district in response to this challenge allocated additional funds to the existing water loss management project and infrastructure upgrading that includes building of a reservoir in Leeudoringstad.
The Southern District Executive Mayor, Boitumelo Moloi has then set aside money to embark on an awareness campaign to assist the local municipality of maquassie Hills inform and engage the community on the challenges faced by the municipality in addressing this country wide water scarcity challenge.
The community of wolmaranstad have in the past year made head lines in rioting against the municipality claiming poor service delivery from the Municipality. The mayor of the area, cllr. Karel Lehloo, “says the community should not confuse platforms of addressing poor service delivery with a platform to collectively address basic human rights needs like water, that the water problem in Maquassi should be addressed in its pertinence, as a natural resource, before it even comes to its management”.
The current situation is that Maquassi Hills consumption is way over normal limit or allocation and reservoir filling capacity. This does not only affect business, it also affects households. There are at least 1600 registered indigents. The biggest problem is to service Tswelelang Township, bulk supply system currently operating at the maximum capacity – as water comes into reservoir it goes out to consumers, steel tank can therefore not be filled and sufficient pressure is not available to provide water to Extension 4,10 and 13, resulting to water cut for periods to give reservoir time to partially fill.
The municipality has since as an interim solution deployed tanks in the said areas, leaving the greatest challenge of not being unable to flash the toilets.
The campaign on saving water and equitably sharing available water, although not unique to Maquassi Hills, will run as follows:
Date |
Venue |
Time |
Audience |
27th Feb |
Makwassie |
13h30 |
General community |
28th Feb |
Witpoort |
13h30 |
General community |
28th Feb |
leeudoringstad |
15h30 |
General community |
29th Feb |
Wolmaranstad town hall |
17h00 |
Business, NGO,CBO, Sector Departments, associations etc |
1st March |
Wolmaranstad |
11h00 |
General Community |
The purpose of the campaign
Educate communities on water saving and national acceptable limit for household consumption.
Clarifying water authority v/s municipal role in the final provision of water
Communicating government programs in equitable sharing of basic services like water and sanitation, free basic services, meaning of indigent register, bi-laws on water restriction and saving.
Educating on water provision processes
Among other contributions during the campaign are presentations by is DWAF, Sedibeng as Water provider in Maquassi Hills, MOEDI on the water Loss Management and restriction installations.
Invited are: Local communities, farmers, agricultural unions, NGO's, CBO, faith based organisations, private sector, parastatals and government departments.
Issued by communication department of the Southern District
Contact : Wendy Sokupha
084 484 4968
wsokupha@sdm.org.za
Tel: 018 473 8063
