Residents of areas falling under the Ramotshere Moiloa Municipality have vowed to intensify protest action if authorities do not supply them with water soon.
The communities who have recently embarked on violent demonstrations demanding services today handed a memorandum to Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu who was accompanied by the North West local government MEC Nono Maloyi.
March organizer Kagiso Booysen, said all wards in the municipality need crucial water infrastructure.
“There should be a reconstruction of all water infrastructure in all wards. Water reservoirs in Ramotshere should be renovated or reconstructed. We demand that from today onwards, all boreholes should be fitted with two operating engines and the other two on standby.
“Security and maintenance of water infrastructure across all wards should be up to standard. The Ramotshere Moiloa local municipality should be given its own water authority license,” Booysen said.
Minister Mchunu said a steering committee consisting of a Deputy Director General from the National Department of Water and Sanitation together with the water board representation was set up to address water challenges across the province.
“For the whole of this province, this is a number one resolution that we took yesterday during our meeting with the Premier. There will be a steering committee that will consist of a technical committee, which will be convened by DDG for water and sanitation, Resimati.
“It will also have a water board, which is Magalies Water. In it, there will be all the District Municipalities in the North West that are affected currently and those that are not affected.
“There will be all municipalities, but we want technical engineers in those municipalities because there will be a purely technical committee that will be discussing technical stuff.
“They will be looking at issues of water challenges at all the municipalities across the province. And they will be analyzing and looking at all existing resources, all skills, all necessary things that need to be attended to. And then they will come up with solutions.
“We will convene again in the first week of next month, they will have met and done all the tasks they are assigned and report back to us. After that we will know exactly what action needs to be taken and go around the community across the province to inform them of the next action,” said Mchunu.
North West areas such as Lichtenburg, Schweitzer Renek, and Vryburg are among those that have been hit by protest action as communities demand access to water.
