The Rustenburg Local Municipality infrastructure team has moved swiftly to plug a water leakage in Tlhabane township, North West following a threat and ultimatum from an irate father after his six-year-old son almost drowned in the pothole created by the water.
The video of a Karel Mogopodi went viral on social media platforms where he shows images of a watery pothole saying his son almost drowned and he accused the municipality of failing to fix the water leakage which turned into a pothole full of water even after they were made aware of it.
“I have sent the video to the neighborhood watch group so they can speed up the process only to find out that the matter was already reported around ten-eleven in the morning but nothing has been done.
“I went to the area around 6 in the evening, there were still no barricades. My son fell in that water at 3 in the afternoon, while the matter was reported and nothing had been done.
“The local councilor came to the area and I approached him and his response was not satisfactory. He seemed unfazed and that’s when I made him aware that the child who fell in the water is my son, and if he could have died, we would be speaking a different language,” said Mogopodi.
Mogopodi said even though he gave the municipality four hours to fix the matter they only fixed it at night and slammed the municipality’s statement that no one was injured during the incident.
“I question the integrity of the Member of the Mayoral Committee for infrastructure, Thabang Rampou for writing a statement saying no one was injured. He should have come first to apologise, that’s my expectation as a parent, on behalf of the directorate which is responsible for infrastructure.
“He should have checked how the child is doing instead of publicising that no one was injured without checking. Where did he get such information, if I did not release it nor my family where did he get it, added the angry father.
MMC for infrastructure Thabang Rampou, has confirmed that the municipal team responsible for water attended fully to the crisis and that restrictions had been implemented in order to afford the team time to repair the leakage.
Rampou apologised for any inconvenience and said no one was injured during the incident.
The municipality team said the top soil had collapsed and exposed the water pipe leak due to the pressure and that the foreman had proceeded to allocate the complaint to the team hence they arrived at 17:59. The pipe leak was repaired at 19:44 and the excavation was barricaded, he said.
