Sewage running straight into Swartkops

Untreated sewage is spewing from the Kelvin Jones waste water treatment site in Uitenhage into the Swartkops River.

At an oversight visit, DA councillor Masixole Zinto said the site was not compliant with the given standards of SA National Standards.

At the site there is a pungent stench and visible flooding of sewage due to an infrastructure breakdown.

Zinto, who was accompanied by MPL Marshall von Buchenroder, NMB caucus leader councillor Jonathan Lawack and MPL Yusuf Cassim, said the situation at many Bay treatment works was dire.

“There is flooding of sewers and the sludge that is being discharged into the Swartkops is raw sewage.”

Zinto said he would invite the department of water & sanitation to monitor the situation.

“The solution that we need to have here is pure compliance, monitor the sites and do oversight [visits] because they have got the budget but they are just not spending,” he said.

Cassim said the problem was poor political leadership.

“My colleagues will be laying criminal charges if the municipal manager fails to act because it is the municipal manager who is accountable for these violations,” he said.

Only one of seven operating waste water treatment works in Nelson Mandela Bay is compliant, with problems including unavailability of machinery, power failures and inflows from industrial companies resulting in poor effluent, according to a council report on infrastructure.

Infrastructure and engineering political head Andile Lungisa said the DA was correct in reporting that the site had experienced problems.

“That was not an oversight because they are getting paid to ensure that people of the metro get services.  

“It is just a stance of the DA for them to sway people into putting their mayoral candidate in power,” he said.

Questioned on the infrastructure problems, Lungisa said there were people on site attending to the problem.