The eThekwini municipality loses R600 million on water that gets lost in distribution and is unaccounted for.

This is according to a comprehensive report presented by the Head of the eThekwini Water and Sanitation Unit, Ednick Msweli to the municipality’s executive committee (EXCO).

Old infrastructure

Msweli said leakage due to the City’s old infrastructure is the major cause of the loss of water.

Records show that the Municipality has 564 000 listed properties of which 39 542 have no connections to the City’s mains.

About 63 805 properties that are connected do not have active accounts, 40 183 active accounts indicate a zero consumption and 56 870 are recorded as disconnected.

Msweli said the unit responds to an average of 285 faults per day on municipal infrastructure and 280 on customer connections.

“Ours is an old city. We need to be spending money on rehabilitating and replacing our infrastructure which is 50 years old,” explained Msweli.

Water amnesty, vandalism and a lack of capacity

He said capacity within the water and sanitation unit was also a major factor but it would be addressed through the reorganisation of operations before a request is made for additional resources.

He added that it was also worrying that only 212 people have come forward to take advantage of the Water Amnesty between January 2012 and December 2014. The amnesty allows people who have illegal connections to be regularised and given proper connections.

The unit has also not been able to respond to leaks in some areas due to unbecoming behaviour by community members which makes it impossible for teams to do their work. Vandalism of infrastructure and proliferation of informal settlement have also compounded the challenge.

8 point turn around plan

An eight point turn around action plan was welcomed by EXCO members.

It includes the internal reorganisation of human and other resources, metering of informal settlements and new housing developments (including upgrade of domestic metres older than 15 years), replacement of ageing infrastructure, smart metering, pressure management, eradication of the water backlog, intensification of the water amnesty campaign and regularisation of illegal connections.

Msweli recommended that the Municipality make available about R300 million per year for the next five financial years to deal effectively with the infrastructure replacement.