The regional Estcourt Hospital has been caught up in intermittent bulk water supply issues for the past six days now. This is obviously hampering healthcare, as water is not only life, but also the principle agent when it comes to hygiene.
Many of Estcourt’s communities and neighbourhoods, like Colita and Forderville, have been plagued by the same continuous water outages. This is the most recent such prolonged water outage event that seem to be becoming an almost monthly occurrence of late in the major towns of Ladysmith and Estcourt.
Calls to the Uthukela District Municipality to improve water service delivery, and communication during times of crises, seems to be falling on deaf ears. It is apparent that the lack of basic services that has been plaguing the rural communities of Uthukela are now also encroaching on the urban areas of the region.
The administration process invoked by the provincial ANC in 2018 was never going to be able to normalise service delivery in Uthukela, as it was the prior decade of ANC mismanagement that brought us to these empty taps.
The DA’s Water Woes Petition to Parliament earlier this year was criticised for not affording the incoming IFP government enough time to see to issues, but it is apparent that Uthukela will need high level national intervention to prevent the region from turning into a jobless dust bowl.