Durban residents are not saving enough water to meet the water reduction target, says the eThekwini council’s water chief.
|||Durban - Durban residents were not saving enough water to meet the city’s 15% water reduction target, said the council’s water head.
In a presentation to the business sector, hosted by the Durban Chamber of Commerce, Ednick Msweli said the city was struggling to meet one-third of the target.
“You can talk as much as you want, but people do not change,” he said.
Msweli said the municipality would carry on with campaigns to tell people to preserve water, though this seemed ineffective.
“We tried voluntary water restrictions, but it did not work,” he said.
He told businessmen and women the city had installed water restrictors at 10% of households in eThekwini - in the Welbedacht, KwaDabeka, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu areas.
Removing these could lead to fines as that would be a contravention of the city by-laws.
A businessman told the city on Wednesday it should have been better prepared to deal with the water problems, as the problem had been looming since 2002.
“We have been talking for years about the loss of water and the ageing infrastructure causing us to lose water. We have all this data flying around, but it means nothing if you do not do anything. I don’t believe this matter is taken seriously,” he said.
Msweli said the water crisis could not be avoided, and put part of the blame for the poor rainfall on the El Nino weather phenomenon which he said was linked to the drought.
But he accepted that investment in the water department had initially been poor and that it had outsourced a lot of work.
sihle.mlambo@inl.co.za
Daily News