Durban — The eThekwini Municipality needs at least R44 billion to fix its ageing water infrastructure and end water crises. This was revealed by the City’s Water and Sanitation head, Ednick Msweli, in a media briefing on Thursday.
Msweli, who is the acting deputy city manager responsible for the Trading Services unit which water and sanitation falls under, was justifying the City’s continuing purchase of water tankers.
The media had asked why the City was buying tankers instead of using the money to replace the ageing water infrastructure. Msweli said if the City were to channel the R44bn to water challenges at once it will mean that other priorities would not be met.
“Our plan is that while fixing or replacing the ageing infrastructure we will phase out water tankers but for now to ensure that residents always get water while fixing infrastructure, we will need water tankers,” said Msweli.
The City’s budget for this year is R67bn. Msweli said the annual budget for replacement of ageing infrastructure was R130 million – a tiny fraction of what was needed.
He also said that as from next week residents in different parts of the metro should expect restricted water supplies or days without water when water curtailment kicks in.
In trying to resolve the infrastructure problem, Mayor Cyril Xaba announced that the city would rope in retired engineers, whom he had already met for advice.
Xaba said water curtailment was necessary.
He said the Water and Sanitation Department had warned that should the drought occur, uMngeni-uThukela Water’s dams would not have enough water to supply the City.
By way of example, he cited a resident who was using 278 litres of water a day instead of 173 litres.
Xaba said that the City’s revenue unit had taken over the billing systems from both the electricity and water units.
He said that unlike these units which had been estimating the amounts of electricity and water consumption for some months before they read meters, the revenue unit would do meter readings every month and bill households accordingly.
In compliance with the Water and Sanitation Department’s directive to the uMngeni-uThukela Water to stop unauthorised water oversupply to the City, Xaba announced on Monday that the City’s water supply would be cut by 8.4%.
The water entity has been pumping an unauthorised 1 406 megalitres a day to eThekwini, instead of the authorised 1287 megalitres, meaning that the City was oversupplied with 118 megalitres a day.
Xaba blamed this high water usage on rapid urbanisation, ageing infrastructure, leaks and illegal connections.
To deal with non-revenue water losses, he said the City would embark on metering all unmetered consumers, improve turnaround time in repairing leaks and pipe bursts through the deployment of ward-based plumbers; and disconnect all illegal connections.
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