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The ongoing water losses and sewerage spillages reported in the Mangaung Metro Municipality (MMM) have become an unmanageable crisis. The Auditor General (AG) reported that the total water losses in MMM amounted to R 465 million for the financial year 2022/2023 and R1,78 billion for the past decade.

The DA spokesperson, Cllr Rossouw Botes, submitted a motion to be served before the council on 14 June 2023 for the establishment of a steering committee for the water crisis in Mangaung. Still, a year later the City Manager failed for the motion to serve. In the motion, it is mentioned that water interruptions have become a daily problem due to these factors.

No sustainable long-term planning on water infrastructure, complete lack of maintenance of the current infrastructure, dilapidated and irreparable infrastructure, Unacceptable levels of water losses, 41% of water is lost due to water leaks and stolen water, under budgeting for infrastructure on water, bad management with limited skills, and lack of political will.

The DA opened a case on 12 August 2022 for the police to investigate the sabotage of water infrastructure after we received complaints from residents in the MMM. The Mangaung Management then stated that they would do their investigation but to date, we have not received any feedback from management or the South African Police Services (SAPS).

Disappointingly, the Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC), Vusi Soqaga, responsible for Engineering and Infrastructure has scheduled only one meeting since November 2021 to conduct an oversight of Mangaung infrastructure.

Another contributing factor to the water crisis is the management of sewerage spillages into our freshwater resources after the MMM received R 70 million for the upgrade of sewerage plants. In August 2023, the DA did oversight of the sewerage plants and found that sections were not operational, a shortage of chemicals was noted and there was also a shortage of technicians and technical skills to ensure the continued operation of the plants.

Every year the DA plead with the management to budget for proactive water and sewerage infrastructure maintenance but falls on deaf ears. A big concern is the stormwater channel in Pasteur Avenue that has overflowing sewerage flowing into the channel since 2016. Engineering consultants have already raised red flags in 2021 on the state of the infrastructure but not even the National Intervention team attempted to stop this problem.

In March, the Human Rights Commission held hearings and representatives of 19 municipalities appeared before them during an investigation into the state of Free State municipalities. Tumbling Masobeng, Head of the Department for Technical Services in Bloemfontein, testified on behalf of the Mangaung metro. He was scolded several times by the National HRC commissioner, Dr. Henk Boshoff about the dire situation in the metro where the "finances are now in a much weaker state than they were in 2019 when the metro, according to art. 139 (7) of the Constitution has been placed under national intervention".

The DA will write and escalate the situation to our leader in the Provincial Legislature, Dr Roy Jankielsohn MPL, to highlight these issues and complaints on the provincial level and to inform him of the ongoing lack of management of the crisis in Mangaung.

Issued by Dirk Kotze - DA Councillor Mangaung Metropolitan Municipality