METRO MATTERS | Sidwell business owners concerned over freshwater leak

Business owners in Sidwell have raised concerns over freshwater streaming down Sutton Road for more than a month.

Riaan Muller, who reported the matter to Metro Matters, said the water just kept on gushing out of a leak near a verge alongside EP Electrical Distributors and said the municipality had done nothing about the situation despite it being reported on several occasions.

“The water has been running down the streets for weeks and I have contacted both the ward councillor and the municipality, with no response,” he said.

Muller said he was concerned about the clean water going to waste.

“There is lots of water being wasted but we have a problem of drought,” he said.

EP Electrical Distributors branch manager Gideon Scheepers said he first thought that his business had a problem with their aircon machine and assumed that was  causing the leak.

“It all started as a small leak and every day got worse and worse, until now the water streams down the street,” Scheepers said.

He said the homeless were using the clean water to drink and some even attempted to wash in it.

“This is bad. Litres of clean water is being wasted, yet the municipality claims that there is a shortage of water in our city,” he said.

He said he had contacted the municipality several times, with no success.

“We phoned the municipality in February and we were given a reference number when we called again for a follow-up.

“The leak was getting worse and we were told that the reference was wrong and then given another,” he said.  

Scheepers said the municipality had since promised to send workers to attend to the problem.

Metro Matters posed questions to Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality spokesperson Mthubanzi Mniki on Friday morning and he said he had escalated  the problem to the relevant department.

However, despite several telephonic, WhatsApp and e-mail queries, no further response was forthcoming by the time of going to print.