Water outages seem to become the order of the day for residents of wards 27 and 31. In the last two weeks, Overport has been hit hard with several burst pipes on Brickfield Road and before that on Peter Mokaba Ridge Rd.
Residents have been fuming as they are left without water to their taps for sometimes as long as two days. The bursts are major with extensive excavation needed to reach the undersurface pipes, sometimes as deep as six metres.
This week, a large section of Overport remained dry because of a huge burst on Brickfield Rd, at the corner of South Rd. A huge portion of the road had to be dug up before the pipe could be reached, resulting in the disruption of water to homes for almost two days. About 13 valves had to be shut off for the repairs to be carried out, indicating the extent of the repair.
About a week or two before, another burst was repaired on the corner of Moses Kotane Sparks Rd, followed by another burst a few meter’s away within a few days. Prior to that, also within a day, there was another major burst on the corner of Brickfield and Roslyn roads. This was a big burst that took the better part of the day for water to be restored.
As this was getting fixed, eThekwini Municipality plumbers were attending to a long-standing burst directly opposite the Roslyn corner burst on the island where the traffic light is positioned. This was another huge excavation to reach the fault. While the latest Brickfield Rd problem was getting fixed, another burst was reported on RD Naidu Drive. All this leaving the residents of Asherville, Springtown and Overport without water.
A few months ago, Ridge Rd was a major contributor to outages because of burst pipes, largely blamed on ailing infrastructure, and the lack of capacity to handle the demand and pressure of water to expanding communities.
A well-placed source in the municipality’s engineering department said that there was a lot of pressure on the water infrastructure presently. He said that there was a proposal to replace the existing pressure reduction valves as the present ones were not adequate, but the municipality was dragging its feet and he did not expect the PRVs to be replaced any time soon.
An Overport resident, and community activist, Waheeda Baig, daughter of former councillor, the late Yacoob Baig, pegged the problem on capacity and infrastructure. “The original water pipes were laid down in the development of Overport to sustain the capacity of inhabitants at that time. As the years went on and the population increased, the areas developed and the pipes were slowly changed over. Over the last few
years, there has been a boom in high-rise buildings and mass inhabitancy in most of the roads around Sparks and Brickfield,” said Baig.
She said that the volume of water that is pushed through the pipes or pressure cannot maintain or survive that force. “When a former councillor requested from the controlling party, in early 2000’s , to lay down the proper foundation and structure around the problematic areas, repair the pot holes, among other things, they simply didn’t have a budget for it. Repairs since then have probably cost more over the years. I have been a resident in the area for almost all my adult life and there has always been
water issues linked to these causes over the last two decades,” she said.
Between 1 January 2022 and 28 February 2023, there were 1130 bursts. Ward 25 had 518 burst water pipes, Ward 27 had 465 while Ward 31 suffered 147 bursts. This information was honed from a set of questions tabled in Council in March by PR councillor Imtiaz Syed.
On Peter Mokaba Ridge Rd alone, 69 bursts or leaks were logged for that same period. Most of these repairs are attended to by contractors. The City cut down its number of contract plumbers from 140 for 78 for that same period because of budget constraints.
Responding to Syed’s question on when the Peter Mokaba Ridge Road line, which runs
from St Thomas to Earl Haig Rd would be replaced in its entirety, the municipality said that it would take between six to 10 weeks to design and produce drawings and submit to the construction team. A budget would need to be allocated that can only be implemented in next financial year, if it is approved.
Syed said that he remained concerned over the high volume of water outages in these wards. “What is happening is the City is using ‘band aid’ measures to fix problems. There needs to be a long- term solution that must be implemented to resolve this problem long-term. It is probably costing the City more money to fix and patch all these faults rather than to replace an entire line,” said Syed.
Abdool Valodia, of the newly formed Overport Residents Association said that the community was “up in arms” as there is currently a “massive issue” with service delivery in the area.
“The burst water pipe has caused residents grief as they were left without water for almost two days. Members of the ORA went to the site of the burst water pipe where we saw one service provider with about three workers.The workers had shut off around 15 valves, which was unnecessary as many of the valves that were shut off that did not need to be closed. It is complete incompetence which has become a norm. Repairs have been done previously to the same area and now the pipe has burst. I’m not sure what the reason was, but surely the municipality is supposed to have a plan in place for such situations,” said Valodia.
He said that the ratepayers were “very upset” that they have not been receiving proper service delivery. The other issue is that even though we haven’t been receiving service delivery, the municipality decided to increase tariffs drastically which was contested by ORA and other associations around the area. We have said that we are going to stop paying rates due to lack of service delivery. We in KZN have been given the highest amount of tariff increase imposed on us, compared to other provinces, ” he added.
One business owner of a fast-food outlet, Mehmood Asmal, said that the water outages has
caused revenue loss as he is forced to stop operating for an extended period. “We are in
the food industry, and we need water all the time. These outages are very problematic for us. Something has to be done as things are getting worse,” said Asmal.
The eThekwini Municipality was contacted to comment on the ongoing service delivery issues in Overport, but no response was received at the time of going to press. Attempts to contact the City’s head of water, Dr Ednick Msweli, also proved unsuccessful.
