The Prince Mshiyeni Memorial Hospital has been left without water for days after a burst on the 300mm diameter water pipe on the South Coast Bridge over the Umlaas Canal.
The eThekwini Municipality confirmed that there were teams are on the ground to undertake tracing and exposing of the burst.
It explained that once the burst had been located and exposed within the bridge, appropriate repairs would be immediately undertaken.
An assessment of the impact to the bridge structure is also being carried out by City engineers, the municipality said in a statement on social media.
The affected areas include Glebelands Hostel, uMlazi Mega City, Prince Mshiyeni Hospital and surrounding areas. According to the municipality, water tankers were being dispatched to affected areas.
However, DA councillor Andre Beetge claimed that the municipality failed to initiate the deployment of water tankers to the hospital over the weekend, and instead it was the DA’s intervention that led to water tankers being expeditiously deployed to the hospital on Monday morning.
He and other DA members did an on-site inspection on Monday morning, where they identified several issues, among which was the concern over the pipe supplying the hospital with water being embedded within the construction of a bridge on Griffiths Mxenge Highway, uMlazi V section.
Beetge said lack of water supply to the hospital was “totally unacceptable”.
He added that the outage relating to yet another burst water pipe had caused challenges not only for the repair team but for the community of Umlazi at large since Thursday last week.
As such, repairs were unable to be concluded over the weekend, which has left patients vulnerable and desperate after the hospital reserves ran dry on Saturday afternoon.
According to Beetge, a temporary solution of diverting the water off the southern SCA line was considered while a new pipe was being constructed; however, this solution may only take effect in the next seven to 10 days and will likely affect other areas in the south.
“While the situation in Prince Mshiyeni is unfortunate and deplorable, the DA is working tirelessly to bring relief to those affected. This crisis requires co-ordination and collaboration between the government, the private sector and the community.
“We appeal to the private sector and NPOs to donate bottled water to the hospital. Arrangements have been made for the hospital to receive and store the donations,” Beetge said.
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