Glenashley residents woke up to foul raw sewage flowing down the streets.
On Monday morning, 17 February, a video filmed by a resident circulated social media showing raw sewage between Ashley Avenue and Newport Avenue. Residents have called for the eThekwini Municipality to address these leaks quicker and address its deteriorating infrastructure.
Ward 35 councillor Bradley Singh said there is an urgent need for action as the city is in crisis. He said: “Since Saturday (15 February), I have contacted department officials about the recent sewage leaks, but their responses have been sluggish. We require the department to respond swiftly.”
Singh called for officials to be held accountable for delays in addressing these issues as images and videos are sent to them. He said despite visual evidence, there’s still no response on time frames to address them apart from this the raw sewage is flowing straight into a stormwater catchment and ending up in the ocean. “Musa Mbele and Deputy City Manager Ednick Msweli must be removed as under these two senior officials the city as essentially is in the intensive care unit and the longer they are at the helm of the municipality we will have more failures in service delivery,” Singh said.
EThekwini Municipality spokesperson Gugu Sisilana said that large volumes of fats and other foreign objects were found; and warned residents that blockages would continue. In reference to the video, she said: “The fault was reported on Friday, 14 February. The City’s team attended to it and cleared the blockage on the same day (Ref: F250214/717). However, the blockage re-occurred on Sunday, 16 February. It was cleared this morning (17 February), and the road has been cleaned. The blockage was caused by a build-up of rags and fat.”
Sisilana said that since Ashley Avenue is a steep road, it causes fat to accumulate. “If residents continue to abuse the sewer system, they will experience more blockages and sewer overflows in the future. We do, however, continue to urge residents to change their attitude and stop introducing foreign objects into the Municipal sewer systems as they are only designed to handle water, human waste and tissue. In most cases, sewer blockages which leads to overflows are caused by hardened oil fats, rags, disposable nappies and many other foreign objects,” Sisilana said.
