THE manager of the Mercury Hibberdene Children’s Holiday Home on the south coast of KwaZulu-Natal was grateful for the rain after being without water for almost a week.
Nishi Naidoo, the manager of the seaside holiday home for underprivileged children, said after six days without water, the water supply was finally restored on Wednesday morning.
Naidoo said the home had been badly affected by the water outage as she was unable to book camps. To generate income the home hosts members of the public.
“We had 70 adults here. Paid for. No water. Our Jojo tanks are empty. We had to buy drinking water and collect from nearby farmers,” she said.
Naidoo said this was an ongoing issue due to vandalism, load shedding, or breakdowns.
She said they were always given different excuses and promised a water tanker which never arrived.
The entire Hibberdene and Port Shepstone area was affected, she said, adding that the ward councillor was very helpful.
“Tessa Perryman, our Ward 13 councillor, organised water from Durban to be distributed to the community.”
She said without water, the day-to-day operations of the home were affected and if the water supply had not returned, she would have had to cancel a booking for 30 people.
Naidoo added that the rain earlier this week offered added relief as they were able to collect rain water in buckets and bottles.
The Ugu District Municipality apologised to its communities for the intermittent water supply in the past few weeks.
Acting municipal spokesperson Mondli Ncane said there had been major equipment breakdowns at key infrastructure points as well as power cuts.
“We would like to assure our communities that we are working on resolving these issues,” he said.
Ncane said the municipality has applied for funding from the national government to assist in the purchase of additional generators to sustain its systems during load shedding.
He said the current generators were inadequate.
“As a long-term solution, we are in the process of applying to Eskom to exempt or exclude our critical points from power cuts due to the fact that it affects our entire systems,” said Ncane.
Ncane said that while the municipality had storage dams as backups, the demand surpassed the supply.
He added that the R19 million which the Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs recently gave the municipality would be used to service mechanical equipment at the St Helens’s Rock and Umthamvuna plants.
Ncane said these plants contain the district’s major infrastructure or key points.
“R4m of that money will also be used for boreholes to benefit communities in the rural areas who have little to no infrastructure, as part of our interim measure,” he said.
– Billions needed to fix Ugu District Municipality's ageing water infrastructure
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