THE Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality has introduced a R15 million water leaks project and announced that they are planning to achieve a turnaround time of 12 hours for attending to water leaks across the metro.
Municipal spokesperson, Mthubanzi Mniki, said that seven plumbing companies had been appointed to enable the NMBM to achieve this turnaround time and to eradicate the huge backlog of a reported 15 000 water leaks in the metro. He added that the municipality was hard pressed to meet residents’ water demands since the metro was not only facing the Covid-19 pandemic, but also a severe drought.
“The rapid response to the water leaks problem comes as the metro is dealing with the global Covid-19 pandemic, which demands that all citizens should have access to water to adhere to government’s health regulations.
“On a monthly basis, the metro loses altogether 28% of its total consumption of water just to water leaks – a huge loss, as every drop counts.
“The metro’s water woes continue, as the average level of our supply dams keep dwindling,” Mniki added.
The introduction of the water leaks project is led by the city’s MMC for Infrastructure and Engineering, Andile Lungisa. “When communities report water leaks, it must not take more than 12 hours for any leak to be attended to by the municipality.
“We cannot afford to lose water through leaks. Since we appointed the seven companies, we have managed to fix 710 water leaks, but we are saying we must be able to ramp it up more and move with speed,” Lungisa said. “While these plumbing companies will also work in the suburbs, we decided to launch the project in areas with a huge number of informal settlements.”
He also mentioned that as at May 20, 1 119 water leaks had already been repaired since the start of the project earlier this month.
Although the project is continuous, Lungisa said that one of the long-term solutions to Nelson Mandela Bay’s water shortage was the development of a desalination plant, which he previously mentioned should be ready before the metro was predicted to run out of water in mid-November this year.
At the launch of this project, residents from water leak hotspot areas were encouraged to report leaks by contacting the toll-free line on 0800 205050. E-mails can also be sent to waterleaks@mandelametro.gov.za for a quick response. The hotspot areas include Despatch, Khayamnandi, Bloemendal, Bethelsdorp, KwaNobuhle and KwaLanga.
