The Economic Freedom Fighters has called for urgent funding for state utility Johannesburg Water to carry out much needed infrastructure development and maintenance.
The EFF on Monday marched on the utility’s offices in the Johannesburg CBD demanding among others urgent infrastructure upgrades as well as for other forms of restrictions as opposed to complete water cuts.
EFF Gauteng Provincial Chairperson Nkululeko Dunga led the protest and said among others significant amounts of water were being lost as a result of leakages.
“ they are lucky that it’s raining today and therefore we wont be able to point the leakages but you must know fighters that about 40 percent of water here in the City of Johannesburg is lost between the reservoirs and your taps, that must come to an end,” said Dunga.
Dunga said while the EFF understood the need for rationing it was concerned that it was the poor that were most affected.
“ they tell us we owe them and cut off water supply. They don’t do water restriction, they do water cut off so they must make a commitment to us right here today. This unconstitutional act of water cut off must be done away with. We are not saying there shouldn’t be restrictions when our reservoirs are below the capacity that they need to ensure that there’s stable water supply everywhere, we don’t have a problem with that. What we have a problem is when you turn off our water on the basis that we owe you, we acknowledge that we owe you but how can we pay when we are not working. You can’t give us 350 ( SRD grant)in day time and at night want us to use the same 350 to pay for water,” said Dunga.
The EFF leader also hit back at interest groups agitating for privatisation of state enterprises such Johannesburg Water arguing they must instead be strengthened.
“ we must always ensure that government entities do not collapse. We must make sure that it is the government that drives the will to sustains jobs and make sure that they create jobs because when there’s jobs that are created there’s money in the pockets of particularly black people. When there’s money in the hands of black people and their pockets they are willing to spend that money and that is what stimulates the economy,” he said.
Head of Stakeholder Relations and Communications at Johannesburg Water Nomdumiso Mabazu received the memorandum and promised to respond to the EFF within a week as required.
On some of the demands Mabuza said the only way to avert water cuts was for households to register as indigents and that those who fail to do so will continue to be subjected to normal billing and along with that, cut offs.
Mabuza said the utility was confident it would be provided with the resources it has asked for infrastructure development and maintenance.
“ its not a secret. We are on record saying we need more resources to attend to the infrastructure decay and we are confident those will be availed and at that point we will be able to deal with the issue,” said Mabuza also dismissing claims the city’s water problem constitutes a crisis.