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The DA in uMgungundlovu today calls on the District Municipality to provide water tankers for residents of Ward seven (7) in the Maswazini area.

This after we learnt that this community has not had running water for the past three months or have they been provided with water tankers from the District. On enquiring about the reasons for this with the District, we were informed that this is not true, that there is water and a technical team that would be sent out the next day. Unfortunately, this didn’t materialise.

Residents of the Nigeria and Bhareni areas, have said that they must walk a distance to get water in containers from those areas that do have.

Members of other areas have to deal water shedding. The answer, as per normal, for all queries, is always load-shedding. At the most recent council meeting and others before, the DA caucus posed questions on how the District intends to curb this and other problems associated with lack of power supply. To date, we have still not received concrete solutions on ‘back up’ supply from the ruling party benches.

The supply of water is crucial to the wellbeing of families, yet there are constant and endless challenges daily. It is tragic, that 30 years from the dawn of our democracy, we still have communities having to, in some cases use a spring for all their domestic water needs . Water tankers, which are supposed to run to schedule, are either late, as reported by some residents, or as is claimed, never turn up at all.

These water tankers can often be found parked off in the Richmond CBD for lengthy periods and are a source for the local vagrants to fill their buckets for car washing in the street.

These long-standing issues with water supply must to be solved without further delay. The DA will continue fighting for the people of Richmond to get uninterrupted supply of water.

Issued by Councillor Clinton Van der Byl - DA uMgungundlovu Councillor