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The Democratic Alliance (DA) calls for urgent intervention in the eThekwini Water and Sanitation department (EWS) as they latest monthly report reveals shocking statistics about the performance of the unit between March 2020 and September 2020.

According to the report submitted to the Human Settlement and Infrastructure Committee, between March 2020 – when the national lockdown was first announced – up until September, there were approximately 27 241 water leak complaints that were reported to the municipality.

That’s more than 120 on average per day!

Let’s give the municipality their rating card:

Type of serviceNumber of complaintsPercentage attended to*

Water leaks
(including operations and customer leaks)27 24134%

Burst pipes6 11550%

Burst meters62825%

Sewer complaints23 59426%

*Attended to complaints within 24 hours. The Municipality has a Service Level Agreement (SLA) with the residents of this city which makes it abundantly clear that water leaks, burst pipes, and sewage leaks must be attended to within 24 hours.

It is clear that this agreement is not being respected and adhered to by the municipality.

In the last council meeting, the DA submitted a motion that specifically asked for an investigation to be conducted in the functioning of the water and sanitation unit, in particular, the nonexistent maintenance strategy. But this was mischievously voted against by the ANC councillors and subsequently rejected by the council.

Unfortunately, this latest report compiled by EWS reflects the DA’s position that the unit is dysfunctional and requires urgent intervention to save the much-needed revenue which is lost due to unattended leaks and burst pipes. In 2019, according to findings by the Auditor General, the city lost over 126,18 million kilolitres of water due to leaks, which resulted in revenue losses of R968 million. As per the AG, such audit findings should be addressed through a concrete action plan and improvement strategy but it is clear that the ANC-led municipality has run out of ideas on how to tackle this problem.

There is simply no plan.

We will continue to highlight this issue until a solid plan is developed by the municipality that will show respect to the residents of this city by being able to respond timeously to water-related complaints as per the agreed service level agreement.

Issued by The DA