FOCUS needs to be placed on behavioural changes when it comes to handling the current drought crisis in Nelson Mandela Bay and blame cannot always be placed on climate change or the government.

These are only some of the topics that were touched on during a recent webinar hosted by the Mandela Bay Development Agency to discuss the severe water crisis in the metro and looming Day Zero.

The Department of Water and Sanitation’s Dr Chris Moseki said that water users needed to take responsibility for their own actions when it comes to this crisis.

He acknowledged that water supply issues were sometimes due to mismanagement at government level, but that government alone was not to blame.

“The Eastern Cape has the lowest water and sanitation services reliability of all the provinces at 49% and mismanagement is a contributing factor.

“The normal drought is also the problem and so is climate change but even though water sometimes doesn’t come out of the taps, users should see themselves as part of the solution,” Moseki said.

“It is good to hold government to account but we must also look at ourselves and not just shout for more water. Even a child will know that they need to close a tap, for instance.

“I seldom hear people shouting at the water users. When we don’t have money, we don’t shout at the minister of finance to give us more money so we cannot shout at government to give us more water. South Africa needs to realise that we all have to be part of the solution,” he added.

Director of Water and Sanitation in Nelson Mandela Bay, Barry Martin, agreed that behavioural change was extremely important. “We only have about four to six weeks until we run dry. If we take away the dead storage, we are left with about 2% of water, which is approximately 22 days, meaning that we could run dry by mid-June,” he explained.

“Focusing on behavioural change is an aspect that we have started looking at already, especially plans about how we can vigorously reintroduce awareness at primary school level again. It’s about going back to the basics.”

Nelson Mandela Bay Mayor, Eugene Johnson, added via a media statement that the change in water management came from an informed user behavioural change and that was why businesses in the metro had funded the installation of several billboards across the city, assisting with the effort to drive down consumption.

“The water crisis will not be solved by technical augmentation interventions only. I am pleased to announce that the City Manager, Dr [Noxolo] Nqwazi, has been facilitating engagements with the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber to discuss collaboration efforts to tackle and reduce water leaks. We are encouraged by the enthusiasm of businesses in working with our administration,” Johnson said.

She also mentioned that they had established a team to focus on messaging and communication.

“Now is not the time for political grandstanding; this drought-induced water crisis affects all of us. The water augmentation schemes that are spearheaded by our infrastructure and engineering directorate are at different stages of implementation and are coming on stream in phases.

“Maintenance of infrastructure and attention to system faults are attended to with speed, and for that I must acknowledge the work of the infrastructure and engineering team. At times they work under severe weather conditions, and with no shortage of criticism.”

Whilst discussing interventions, Martin added that vandalism of the metro’s infrastructure had played a huge role in curbing their efforts to fight the drought.

Therefore, they had invested in 24/7 security at installation sites and placed sensors in manholes to protect existing infrastructure.

“The solution that the NMBM is promoting is to improve the water supply mix and diversify, so that when one area is struggling, we can back it up with another supply.

“The desalination of seawater is an added feature in the future but we need to look at it differently and make it our baseline supply so that when we are in trouble, we have the dams that we can use to ride out that period,” he said.

Martin added that tenders had closed for the Coega desalination project.