DA writes to HRC on Nelson Mandela Bay’s dire water situation

The DA in Nelson Mandela Bay has written to the Human Rights Commission requesting an investigation be conducted into the state of water affairs in the Bay, pointing to the municipal leadership as the reason the city finds itself in the dire water situation.

In a statement issued by DA provincial leader Nqaba Bhanga on Wednesday,  he said the party had also written to council speaker Buyelwa Mafaya to request that she call an emergency meeting of the municipal public accounts committee (Mpac) to discuss various aspects of the water crisis.

Bhanga said the reason they had approached the commission was because the constitution, under Section 27 1 (b), provides that all South Africans have the right to sufficient water.

He said this had not been the case in some areas of the metro which had now been without running water for more than a week, and the reason the metro was suffering was due to poor and “inept” leadership.

“The metro has blamed the water interruptions on excessive consumption, of 290 megalitres, which exceeds the available 250 megalitres.

“The administration tries to lay the blame on the residents of the metro, and avoid accountability ...

“The metro is hiding behind a so-called Day Zero, although there is no Day Zero. We have water in our dams and water from the Nooitgedacht Low Level Water Scheme.

“This inept government is not able to manage the water — we have reached Day Incompetence and nothing more,” the statement read.

Bhanga went on to say that the DA would write to Eastern Cape co-operative governance and traditional affairs (Cogta) MEC Xolile Nqatha and Cogta minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, to urgently intervene and request immediate feedback on why the metro had allowed contracts to expire.

He was referring to several contracts which had allegedly expired across sectors including infrastructure and engineering, corporate services, safety and security as well as energy and electricity.

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