The City of Tshwane recently purchased 15 new water tankers. (Photo: Nasiphi Moya/X)
The City of Tshwane will not be using contracted water tankers for the next three months.
Dr. Tshwane Mayor Nasiphi Moya’s administration has decided to suspend water tank transport services for the rest of the financial year due to financial constraints within the metro’s water and sanitation unit.
Contracted water tankers will therefore not be sent to formalized areas until 1 July in the event of a water cut.
Water supply to informal settlements will however continue as normal.
“The city has done everything in its power to maintain water tank services, despite increasing financial pressure. However, available resources are now completely exhausted,” the metro explains in a video recording.
The metro says in the video that it will only send out its own water tankers to formalized areas in cases of critical emergency. The City of Tshwane currently has a limited fleet of 20 water tankers.
where is the money
Grandi Theunissen, FF Plus council member and one of the party’s two mayoral candidates, told Maroela Media on Tuesday that the metro’s decision to temporarily suspend water tank transport services is a direct result of years of excessive outsourcing at prohibitive rates to contractors who have close ties to the ANC-led coalition.
“The fact that basic services are stopped three months before the end of the financial year only proves that the so-called ‘funded budget’ is simply a front to cover up mismanagement,” Theunissen believes.
Moya’s administration has been under fire for months over their spending on contracted water tankers. The issues have recently raged even more fiercely following allegations of tender manipulation.
Grandi Theunissen, mayoral committee member for community safety in the Tshwane Metro Council. (Photo: Tania Heyns/Maroela Media)
Cilliers Brink, the DA’s mayoral candidate in Tshwane, believes that the ANC-led coalition has now finally realized that it cannot continue like this.
“And we know they have realized this, because that is why they have now purchased water tankers – partly to spend less on tenders, and partly to show they are taking action.
“It is better to own your own wagons, especially if you look at who benefits from these tanker contracts – ANC high-ups,” Brink said on Tuesday.
“However, the truth is that a few wagons are not going to make a difference. It is a band-aid that is pasted over a massive wound. The real solution is to plow money back into the maintenance of the city’s water infrastructure.
“This is how you can correct the problems that plague the city,” Brink believes.
Cilliers Brink, the DA’s mayoral candidate in Tshwane. (Photo: Tania Heyns/Maroela Media)
What about Rooiwal farmers?
The suspension of the metro’s water tank services disregards a standing court injunction which obliges the metro to supply sufficient water to farmers in the vicinity of Rooiwal in the Tshwane metro area.
Maroela Media earlier reported that the municipality is obliged in terms of a 2023 court order to provide communities in these areas with clean drinking water, after years of decaying infrastructure and mismanagement led to sewage water seriously polluting the land and boreholes in the area.
Theunissen says the ruling coalition’s “preference for expensive private contractors rather than internal capacity” has now led to the suspension of the right to water for thousands of residents.
Maroela Media has sent an inquiry to the metro and is awaiting a response.