MyPE

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East Cape’s capital of no works unless water crisis is resolved

By

Dear MyPE

The underlying causes of the water crisis that has hit the capital of this province — Bhisho — since Friday need to be resolved and action taken as a matter of urgency, otherwise we are going to be branded as the capital of NO WORKS, as people have to work from home

The Department of Roads and Public Works needs to facilitate an audit of the aging infrastructure impacting on our capital city in conjunction with Buffalo City Municipality and Amathole District Municipality, as the blame is shifted between the two.

The DA has recorded eight days of water outages impacting on the legislature so far this year, resulting in staff having to go home.

The scale of lost opportunity, cost and productivity run into millions. The legislature salary budget alone is R262-million a year.  This amounts to more than R5-million a week. When you multiply this by the number of other government departments involved, you start to get a picture of the scale of the wastage of public resources when people are sent home because there is no water in the taps or toilets.

This is a failure of service delivery on an unprecedented scale, which causes the nerve centre of the province to grind to a halt, resulting in service delivery going down the drain.

The unhygienic conditions that people have to put up with are also disgusting, as toilets clog up and stink. Female staff members are complaining of upset stomachs and bladder infections.

I personally cleaned the toilets on the DA floor in the legislature yesterday evening when the water came on so they would be usable this morning.

I have worked in Bhisho since 1999 and have never known the water crisis to be this bad.

The DA will continue to raise this matter in all the relevant forums so infrastructure-revitalisation takes place in our capital city.

The DA has a vision of our capital as a vibrant and working hub, actively engaged in uplifting the people of this province and we will continue to strive to make this a reality.

Regards

Bobby Stevenson

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Port Elizabethan

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