The Masilonyana Municipality in the Free State has opened a case of vandalism after vandals damaged the water treatment plant in Theunissen. The damage to the tune of R5 million has left residents without running water for over 20 days and counting.
Residents woke up to dry taps on the 14th of December. And since then, they rely on water tankers to deliver water to them. Some days they wait for days without getting any supply.
Residents are concerned that the situation is increasingly posing health risks.
“It’s painful to not have water. Water is life, everything you do you use water. As a community we help to what we should do because we have been waiting since four in the morning waiting for the water tanker. We want to know when are we getting our water.”
“The problem that is hurting is that we have grannies who don’t know what to do. They are waiting for these children. We are waiting here with who came here in the morning.”
“We are getting sick without water. Sewage is smelling at sunset we can’t stay in our houses. They can refuse to give us all, houses or other but we want water. We get that there is theft but municipality must ensure that we get water from morning or only skip one day. The last time we got water it was Tuesday.”
The Masilonyana Municipality says what happened on the 13th of December was out of the ordinary. It says the water treatment plant was maliciously damaged.
It happened a day after the security company that is responsible for guarding the plant left the site unattended. It is reported that there was an issue over non-payment.
Now the municipality has to fork out millions of rand.
“We are sitting with a bill totally more than R5 million just to fix and restore the plant into operation so basically as of yesterday we were able to hand over the site to a contractor that is ow busy with restoration work so that at least in the next couple of days or on a week or two weeks time we will have the plant fully operational or some levels of the capacity of the plant pumping water to the community,” explains Zongezile Ntswabule, the spokesperson of Masilonyana Municipality.
The municipality concedes that it lacks capacity. There are only five water tankers.
“We are now over stretched in terms of the resources that we are having. Theunissen has got four wards and we have to supply all those wards. We have even come up with a strategy where we are focusing on two wards a day, we are alternating. This is based on a number of trucks that we are having on the ground but we are trying all the means with what we have,” adds Ntswabule.
Residents say they are frustrated by the lack of communication from the municipality. – Reporting by Thoola Letlala
Theunissen residents left without running water after vandals damaged water treatment plant:
