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Community Business Directory, Event Listings, News and Views from Gqeberha, Nelson Mandela Bay

Drought: The consequences of NOT attending to maintenance and infrastructure

30 April 2017 By Alan Straton

If the municipality fixed all leaks and took the log out of their own eyes before removing the speck from the domestic consumer’s eyes then we would, in all likelihood, not have the current water restrictions in place, with more to come!

When one sees videos like the one below one is tempted to wonder why the domestic consumer of water battling to save water and letting gardens and plants die will continue saving that 125 litres of bath water when municipal pipes continue to spew water with abandon.

The iniquitous position that ratepayers find themselves in is that FINING the municipality for such reckless abandon will just result in fining the ratepayer so the incentive for our municipality to actually concentrate on fixing aging infrastructure has been removed. Oh that we could all live in a world where a budget is dependent upon how much we can milk the ratepayer and nothing else!

The latter part of this video is courtesy of Garth van Niekerk from the Lake Farm area who reports that the resident ‘brick recycler’ says that the leak has “been running for two years!” Filmed on Saturday 29 April 2017 and situated near to the entrance to the old Arlington race course the stream runs unchecked.

On some level our Municipality is failing us completely when you realise that the loss of water from DAM to TAP is in the region of 40%. If we could get that number down to just a 15% loss then we would have no need for water restrictions.

Time for someone to catch a serious wake up here, people.

Related: 2017 Dam Levels

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.
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Filed Under: Business, Editorial Tagged With: Arlington, water loss

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Alan says

    2 May 2017 at 12:31 pm

    An emailed comment from Mike:

    The amount spent on water saving ads. in newspapers, on lamp poles and bus stops could have been better used to employ the 300 plumbers she cannot employ because of shortage of finance.

    Maybe less emphasis on the Metro Police budget would have been the most logical option. Neither they nor the existing traffic department are visible on the roads except at the money making roadblocks.

    The water shortage in Cape Town can squarely be blamed on the DA municipality. Here they can still try to blame Danny Jordaan & Co. just like the blame game on apartheid.

    I saw no warnings issued by the DA or any other apposition party prior to the elections last year about the looming water crises which they couldn’t have not seen if they were playing an active opposition roll.

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