Sabotage could be at the heart of the water issues in Phalaborwa town as residents were left without water for four days amid an ongoing wage dispute.
DA ward councilor, Sybrandt de Beer, said that the municipality was aware of the water crisis but have not done anything constructive to intervene. He believed that there was an element of sabotage, as most of the water valves in town were manually closed.
This according to him could have been due to the ongoing labour dispute between the municipality and its employees regarding overtime.
According to de Beer, overtime at the municipality was temporarily halted following last month’s R900 000 overtime bill. This has led to employees refusing to tend to call outs after hours.
“The valves in town were closed and not one of the standby team members answered their phones. So I decided to help the residents by checking which areas did not have water and open those valves since the employees were the only ones with valve spanners,” stressed de Beer.
More than 30 valves in 20 different streets were opened by de Beer and the team, which included private citizens and plumbers on Saturday, the 15th of October.
“Limpopo is currently experiencing daily heat waves and some people need to take medication. This water crisis is not only avoidable, but totally unacceptable and we cannot allow our people to be subjected to this. Water is a basic right, our government needs to intervene here, it’s a crisis and we need help,” he explained.
In another hollow attempt to pacify rather than rectify, the local municipality paid their usual lip service and said they would investigate the claims of sabotage.
In the meantime hopeless residents, David Vun and Hlanganiso Mnisi, have arranged a drilling rig and will soon have a borehole sunk in an effort to have an alternative water supply source.
***Editor’s comment:
It is unfathomable that a municipality as clearly inept and mismanaged as the BPM continues to evade the radar of parliament. If one compares the current abhorrent state of Phalaborwa town to the absolutely thriving jewel it was during the 1960’s right through to the late-1990’s it is strikingly clear that government has, and continues to, turn a blind eye to the plight of small local municipalities and the voting public, most of whom who happen to be ratepayers, who are forced to suffer the incessant greed-fueled arrogance of these somehow elected officials.
Officials under whose watch their town has been raped, humiliated, and stripped of all its dignity in plain view of every international tourist that now steers clear of this once proud holiday destination. Remove the current benchwarmers who occupy the halls of what used to be municipal offices, replace them with publicly elected officials who possess the necessary skills to deliver services and earn their wages.
In fact, Phalaborwa doesn’t need political deployees who don’t pay rates or taxes on their properties, who work harder on increasing the circumference of their waistlines than learning basic governance or who loot public coffers to install generators at their private homes.
Phalaborwa needs them to be replaced by artisans. Start with the axing of the current spokesperson whose retirement is long overdue. Perhaps then at least the residents will hear from their municipality despite not seeing them anywhere.
