Eastern Cape premier, Oscar Mabuyane, confirmed that vandalism of government infrastructure is one of the challenges faced in the province.
He said this during a handover of Tyhinira Water Works Treatment at Tyhinira locality in Elliotdale, last week.
Mabuyane said the intention of the government was to make sure all community members receive clean water.
Mabuyane added that under the Amathole District Municipality, government had built two dams with the aim of helping community members.
“What worries us is the vandalism that is always taking place in these services. It is one of the problems that is affecting us, because we are trying to ensure that people are receiving clean water, but some of the community members vandalise the same service that must assist them,” said Mabuyane.
He added that even in schools they were installing flushing toilets, meaning the water is always needed.
Mabuyane said some of the challenges were the illegal connections, where people do not follow the right procedure when they want to connect water to their homesteads. He said in other areas they found water coming out of unattended taps.
He appealed to community members to take care of these things.
Executive mayor for Amathole District Municipality, Anele Ntsangani, said they are now busy building reservoirs, to ensure all the community members have access to clean water.
He confirmed there are areas who already receive water from this dam.
Ntsangayi said they were happy about this achievement, and they believe that it will change the lives of their people.
“There are seven wards that are benefiting from this dam only. Vandalism is a thorn in our flesh, but we want to make sure that we are dealing with it. We are in the process of getting security services that will look after this infrastructure all the time. We are engaging our communities through public participation, that they should own the infrastructures because it belongs to them,” said Ntsangani.
One of the beneficiaries from Tyhinira locality, Mangwanya Kuzele, said they were struggling because they were using dirty water.
“The main problem is that our stock is in danger, because the dam is not fenced. We are losing our stock all the time, so we appeal to government to fence it. Our children are also not safe,” said Kuzele.
