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The Democratic Alliance (DA), together with the community of Garies, have come up with an action plan to urgently address the town’s latest water crisis.

Water has already been off for about 12 days and water shortages have crippled the local community with hospital services being amongst the worst affected.

The inability of the municipality to permanently address the water issues for years already, sees the desalination plant intermittently standing still because there are no chemicals. There are also no pumps at Modderfontein and Roodbergskloof, despite promises about two months ago that these would be installed.

The municipality has not even bothered to prioritise the hospital, which serves the whole Kamiesberg area. At the very least they should have enabled intermittent water supply to the hospital, given that there is a direct pipeline from the retention dam to the hospital. The hospital, which received three loads of water only yesterday, further has no mitigation strategy in place to ensure that healthcare can continue amidst the water cuts that are further worsened by loadshedding.

While the DA has offered to supply the hospital with 2500 litres of water each day, this is not nearly sufficient to serve everyone’s need and to maintain health services.

Given a lack of feedback from the municipality, I arranged an urgent meeting with the ward committee. We agreed on a number of points to address this ongoing crisis. Amongst other things, these include that water from the desalination plant must be immediately pumped into the system. Chemicals must urgently be procured. Pumps and water meters must also be installed at all water sources. We will pressurise the municipality into implementing all of our proposals.

The municipality is duty bound to urgently find solutions.

Given that the Kamiesberg water issues has been under their radar for some time already, Constituency Head, Veronica van Dyk, will also provide another update to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC).

Issued by Toelie Coetzee, Cllr - Kamiesberg municipality