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Showing a united front from the Government of National Unity (GNU), both Deputy Ministers for the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) descended to the Free State to monitor and inspect maintenance operations at the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) tunnel in Clarens on Friday, 15 November 2024.
According to Deputy Minister Mr David Mahlobo (ANC), the more than R300 million project is well on track and there is no water supply crisis since the 38 kilometres tunnel will be closed for six months, he said provisions have been made for provinces that will be affected including Gauteng and the Free State.
Working in collaboration with Lesotho government, Mahlobo affirmed that there was proper planning ahead of the shutdown of the tunnel and ascertained the readiness of the affected provinces, making sure that provision for water is not hindered.
Deputy Minister David Mahlobo said the provinces will not be affected by the shutdown of the tunnel, mainly Gauteng province, as it is a beneficiary of mining development whereby they bring water from everywhere, it has about 14 dams feeding into the Integrated Vaal River System, which remains healthy at 33 percent.
“When it is at 33 percent, there is no need to worry, because if the water goes to a standard operating procedure of a quantum of 18 percent, immediately our teams are going to release water,” said Mahlobo.
The Free State has more risks compared to Gauteng, though the provision of water is sure, the challenge lies in municipalities and their competency to supply and distribute water to reach residents.
The Deputy Minister said they conducted an assessment on where the water will come from during the closer of the tunnel, he said there are two dams that can supply water should the province run out of which includes Sol Plantjie dam. Moreover, the Trans Caledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA) in partnership with the Infrastructure Unity has allowed the department to harvest water before the closure of the tunnel, they released close to 700 million cubit litres in short period.
Some the water was supplying Bloemfontein and most of the water was captured at the Caledon.
“Where we stand from a water resource point of view, there is no crisis…, the situation has been stabilised, there have been some rains. When you look at the flows, there is a nice flow that you could see; but we are not going to actually guarantee that we will have water, but the other dams here in the Free State are full,” said David Mahlobo.
The Deputy Minister Mr Sello Seitlholo (DA) came out strong saying it is about time that the Free State Province wakes up to the fact that its municipalities are not performing well and deal with water leakages and illegal water connections. He urged the Mayors and those in authority in municipalities to speak out against corruption.
“We must have no fear, no favour when we are dealing with water tanker mafias, these are people who are deliberately sabotaging our infrastructure and we know who they are; they are municipal employees, they are politicians, they are tender-preneurs; we know who they are.
We must never shy away from at pointing people out and we need to obviously strengthen our law enforcement because we know that there is a lot of fear in the country, in term of people saying ‘if I go and report this one, he is out tomorrow I am in danger’; these are the kind of things that the situation like this should really really give municipalities a wakeup call,” said Seitlholo.
Seitlholo emphasised the need for local government to improve otherwise the issues plaguing municipalities, including that of water supply will persist.
After a walk about into the tunnel itself, the DA Deputy Minister said they are happy with the progress made so far and vouched for the engineers on site, saying they are the best of the best.
