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Makhanda
Residents of Makana in the Eastern Cape are sounding the alarm as the region’s ongoing water crisis intensifies. Some communities say they’ve been without a steady water supply for over five days, leaving them to grapple with basic daily needs like drinking, cooking, and sanitation.
The situation, which has been escalating over the past three months, is a continuation of a long-standing problem that dates back to 2019, when Makhanda first began experiencing water shortages.
Desmond Tshabala, a resident of the Nkanini community, has lamented the situation.
“There is no water at all here, the taps are normally dry, it is a daily thing. We have all the municipality trucks that are coming in here but that’s not enough. As you just saw coming up from the terminus, you see some containers around the taps, there’s no water, even the elderly have dry taps, they get zero water the whole day,” says Tshabalala.
The Makada Municipality says poor infrastructure and leakages have led to the water shortage and, a plan to restore it is in place.
Municipal Speaker Mtutuzeli Matyumezi, says, “There’s been lots of business plans that have been submitted, but because of the grant that we are getting, which is too small to cover such pipes, we are still talking about the asbestos pipes from that side. Even that asbestos is very difficult to maintain if you are fixing it. It’s a major problem and a serious problem and indeed, we do have what is called a business plan of which at least we are knocking on other levels of government in terms of getting the funding to this bulk infrastructure challenge.”
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Meanwhile, humanitarian organisation, Gift of the Givers plans to deploy more water tankers to the Makana Municipality in the Eastern Cape. This after residents reached out to the charity group when they were left without water on Christmas Day, as the town continues with water-shedding.
Old-age homes are reportedly the worst affected.
Gift of the Givers spokesperson, Ali Sablay says the organisation has been providing water tankers for communities in the municipality since 2019.
“Our main concern is the operations of the clinics and the old age homes. When the old age homes reached out to us to inform us that they cannot bath the old people, they are struggling with water. We then knew that we had to redeploy additional water tankers as the calls were not coming from those in the informal settlements or the schemes but it’s coming from institutions who are totally dependent on the water tanks to fill their tanks for them to survive. We then made a call out to our team because our main distribution days are every second day to the Makhanda area because we have been in the municipality since 2019,” says Sablay.
