LUCAS LEDWABA
RESIDENTS of the Greater Giyani and Mopani district municipalities who have been without running water for years may have to endure another long wait before their taps run again.
An oversight committee by the chairperson of the parliamentary portfolio committee on co-operative governance and traditional affairs Faith Muthambi to the two entities in Giyani on Thursday yielded nothing pointing closer to a solution.
A less than impressed Muthambi said she had asked them to provide further information on the report they handed over during their meeting.
“It can’t be business as usual. If we are able to deliver jojo tanks through this Covid-19 our hope is that even beyond covid-19 jojo tanks will remain with water,” Muthambi told Inside Metros during an oversight visit to an incomplete stadium project in Giyani section E.
Construction of the project started in 2014 but to date, only an incomplete grandstand is the only evidence of the project. Vandals and hoodlums have now targeted the facility which is in the middle of a residential area.
Muthambi said MPs have been asked to do oversight visits in their respective provinces during the lockdown.
Last year the Standing Committee on Parliamentary Accounts (Scopa) found that Mopani district municipality which incorporates Greater Giyani had received adverse findings for four consecutive financial years.
It also found that the municipality had failed to implement any consequence management despite non-compliance with audit requirements and that Mopani owed R571 million to the Lepelle Northern Water Board.
Greater Giyani local municipality is among the local government structures that lost hundreds of millions of their funds after investing in the now ill-fated VBS mutual bank.
MPs were livid after the two entities again failed to provide answers to their ongoing financial mismanagement and service delivery challenges during an oversight committee in September.
This week Muthambi hinted there was nothing to cheer about and revealed she had ordered the municipalities to provide a much more detailed report.
Mopani and Greater Giyani have been identified as serial offenders in failing to comply with the auditing process and have been hauled before parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Accounts and the Cogta committee on numerous occassions.
Muthambi expressed dissatisfaction over the fact that three mayors had come and gone and yet the stadium project remained incomplete and was now being vandalised and posing a security threat to residents.
She said the root cause of problems in municipalities was a lack of oversight and said they needed to strengthen oversight mechanisms.
She also said they were plagued by project management challenges which led to incomplete projects as in some cases companies submitted tenders with low prices but municipalities did not check if they had the capacity to take on the projects.
“The contractors should be pursued and sued,” Muthambi said.
She said the power to pursue non-compliant contractors “lies with the person who is contracting the contractors.”
The Mopani and Giyani areas have been plagued by chronic shortages of water which have been blamed largely on corruption and mismanagement that led to the collapse of the multi-million rand Nsami-Nandoni water project.
“Theirs is to provide water. There’s so many dysfunctional boreholes,” said Muthambi, adding that the municipalities had failed to provide a breakdown of the number of boreholes they claimed were functional.
She said the use of water tankers to supply communities with water has been turned into a lucrative business.
“They came with water tankers. Those water tankers are hired. There are people who have seen this tankering as a lucrative business, it’s not sustainable,” she said.
Pule Shayi, executive mayor of Mopani district municipality told Inside Metros that an engineer has been appointed for the Nsami Nandoni project. He also blamed the lack of water on the low levels in the Middle Letaba Dam and said the Greater Giyani municipality had been given an additional three water tankers in response to the covid-19 outbreak.
Greater Giyani municipality BA Shivambu said they were informed that a new contractor has been appointed for the Nandoni project through the department of water affairs. She said the project will ensure that 55 villages get water by 2021.
“Water is a serious challenge,” said Shivambu.
She said they have received five water tankers and tanks and the municipality has a scheduled delivery service that runs seven days a week.
The COGTA portfolio committee is expected to conduct further oversight visits in the municipal areas in the coming weeks.
(Compiled by Inside Metros staff)