DURBAN - UGU District Municipality said crucial infrastructure, equipment and vehicles, especially those needed for the supply of water and sanitation, were severely damaged in last week’s unrest.
The cash-strapped South Coast municipality said several municipal assets had been affected.
Municipal spokesperson France Zama said municipal buildings and offices were set on fire and destroyed, leaving the whole office block building at the Mkholombe depot in a state of disrepair.
Zama said about eight water tankers, three excavators, two TLB trucks and five vehicles were also destroyed by fire. He said the ongoing assessments indicated a huge loss estimated at hundreds of millions of rand.
“The destruction of these municipal assets, intended to deliver services to our residents, has had a devastating effect on the municipality’s ability to deliver services.
“We therefore wish to advise our residents of a possible delay in response time to service requests that have been made through our customer service portals,” said Zama.
Before the unrest last week, the South Coast municipality had over the years experienced a number of disruptions and vandalism of its infrastructure, especially for the supply of water. The municipality had also said ageing water infrastructure was the main reason behind ongoing pipe bursts.
Zama said the municipality would not have funds to purchase new vehicles as they were expensive and they did not have the budget for them.
“Each water tanker is about R2 million, and each TLB is over R2.5m. So it’s going to hit us hard. There are so many queries where we need to fix burst pipes, and we can’t because we don’t have a TLB. We are outsourcing services, and that is even worse because it’s expensive,” he said.
THE MERCURY