Hon Chair, thank you Deputy President. The Emfuleni Local Municipality has given up. Thank you for your recent visit, it was much appreciated and you pledged the R1,1 billion which I think is necessary. When the NCOP Gauteng visited a few days later, the executive mayor advised us that they needed R6 billion in order to start and only when they got that R6 billion, it will take another year to fix the problem.
Hon Deputy President, the instruction from the erstwhile Water and Sanitation Minister Nkwinti to get the 44 pump stations running has been ignored. As you say that the SANDF has done a fantastic job at
the treatment works but they are under capacity. They cannot commission the treatment works until the pump stations move the raw sewage up to the treatment works in order to treat it.
The municipality is not spending any of their own money on the sewer network. I am not saying that national government must help them, they have given up. They cannot perform the most basic service delivery tasks due a lack of their own funds. The inability to procure diesel for their vehicles, to enable them to get to sites means that residents suffered recently for four days, with no electricity. Councillors are giving the municipality money for diesel out of their own pockets.
The water leaks are left unattended for three or four days at a time, even though the rest of Gauteng has been asked to save water in this time of water scarcity, because of a lack of capacity and diesel. As you mentioned that the sewage continues to flow into the river network and affecting the drinking water. The municipality has been placed on terms by Eskom and was placed under section 139 administration. All that they did was, they appointed the municipal manager as the administrator. So it was just business as usual.