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City of Cape Town shares best practice to mitigate NMB water crisis

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Dear MyPE

The Democratic Alliance (DA) in Nelson Mandela Bay has approached the DA-run City of Cape Town for advice on how to mitigate the water crisis in the Metro.

On Thursday, 30 April 2020, I attended a virtual meeting with the chairperson of the DA’s federal council and former Western Cape Premier, Helen Zille, head of the DA’s governance unit, James Selfe, MP, and Deputy Mayor of the City of Cape Town, Alderman Ian Neilson.

The Eastern Cape delegation included DA EC Provincial Chairperson, Andrew Whitfield, MP, Mayor of the Kouga Municipality, Cllr Horatio Hendricks, and NMB Cllrs Jonathan Lawack and Masixole Zinto.

The City of Cape Town won international acclaim for its efforts in avoiding Day Zero and shared with us global best practice to address the NMB water crisis.

  • Some of Cape Town’s successes include:

    Running a major information campaign to draw public attention to the crisis. Cape Town became the first city in the world where water consumption dropped by 50% over 2 years.

  • The City introduced an extremely effective free leak-fixing service for underground pipes and became one of the world’s most efficient Cities in preventing water losses.
  • Public and private enterprises installed Jo-Jo tanks and businesses were encouraged to install greywater systems.

Following our discussions, the City of Cape Town has offered to make water infrastructure engineers available to the NMB government to assist with implementing steps at its major supply dams to avoid Day Zero.

During the DA’s tenure as part of a coalition government in Nelson Mandela Bay, one of our most important successes was reducing daily water consumption from 280 megalitres to 240 megalitres.

  • In order to decrease consumption an aggressive water awareness campaign was launched to keep residents informed.
  • Water-saving visits were undertaken to schools, clinics, businesses, the hospitality industry, and high water consumers. A water awareness campaign at more than 200 schools was very successful.
  • EPWP employees were trained and went out into communities to educate residents about water restrictions and water saving.

Under the current ANC-led coalition government there is almost no information sharing with residents and daily consumption has soared to 300 megalitres.

The DA is willing to assist the current government in an effort to save residents from taps running dry.

Regards

Nqaba Bhanga
DA EC Provincial Leader

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Port Elizabethan

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