Note to editors: Please find attached pictures here, here and here, taken during DA’s oversight visit to the Ezakheni water pump station today
The DA in KwaZulu-Natal has today given IFP-run uThukela District 72 hours to submit a report on the failures and alleged looting at the R45 million Ezakheni water pump station.
If the IFP fails to table the report, the DA will have to reconsider its support of the IFP in the District.
The DA has discovered that the six (6) industrial pumps that were locally manufactured by a South African manufacturer called APE were removed in April and are to be written off by a third party. APE monitored these pumps remotely via telemetry and confirmed that the pumps incurred no damage during the April 2022 floods. APE has also not been afforded the opportunity to inspect these pumps as provided for in the warrantee agreement.
Incredibly the pumps, that came at a cost to the taxpayer of R45m, have been removed after only been in service for five years, despite a decade’s long anticipated life span.
During April 2022, the town of Ladysmith and the Ezakheni water works extraction point was flooded. The Governing IFP allowed a third party to clean up the pumps and they advised that the six industrial pumps were damaged. They were however not returned to the manufacture, APE, for inspection and repair, but seemingly handed over to a third party that declared that they should be written off.
The third party then proposed a made a make-shift plan was with the installation of six lesser commercial grade pumps as a stop-gap measure.
The DA is very concerned that the motive to write-off these assets can be driven by ulterior motives.
While there seems to be very little leadership and political will to get these pumps repaired and fitted, the current extraction plant can only provide 25% of the required water demand. This means that thousands of households and businesses in Ladysmith run dry every day. Further, as the old neglected underground reticulation pipes run dry and then get charged with pressure they burst and leak on mass, further complicating lives for residents of Ladysmith and wasting valuable resources.
Over 70 000 residents in Ladysmith run out of water on almost daily a basis now. Schools, shops and households struggle to function as they have no water.
The situation has been allowed to deteriorated to such a degree, that the financial viability of the whole Municipality is in jeopardy. Currently only 30% percent of rates are being paid as residents turn their backs on the District due seeing the bad service delivery.
As the crises deepens the cause of these ongoing disruptions seems to be known by both the uThukela management and elected leadership, and yet it seems that the governing IFP, lacks the political will to rectify the crises that has been ongoing for months now.
Questions of concern will also be raised around the possibility of rental agreements with the third party for the lesser pumps, were the original APE pumps where paid for in full? Were they designed to last for decades?
The DA currently props up the IFP in uThukela after the EFF withdrew their support. The DA’s provincial Leadership Will therefore put the IFP in UThukela on terms to have the Ezakheni Plant Extraction point fully restored to the original APE specifications within a reasonable timeframe.
The DA will continue to do all it can to do right by the people of uThukela.