Durban - The Ugu District Municipality on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast is considering legalising the illegal water connections in its area in an effort to curb rampant theft and generate much-needed revenue.
The municipality is losing millions of rand as a result of illegal connections that are compounding the water supply problems.
The culprits are “sucking” out the water from the system and depriving other homes of water supply, said municipal manager Dr Elliot Ntombela.
He spoke of the challenges the district municipality has faced, saying they had identified issues that had led to the water shortages and implemented steps to improve the situation.
The area has faced severe water supply problems that have triggered community protests and threats of legal action from residents.
Opposition parties agreed that in the recent past, they had seen a slight improvement in water supply and reliability.
“There have not been as many water complaints as there have been in the past. We are busy addressing those challenges,” Ntombela said, giving the assurance that the festive season would mark the revival of the tourism industry which has been affected by water supply problems.
Ntombela said illegal connections were a major problem.
“There have been instances where we put in a new pipe and someone breaks that pipe and puts in their own illegal connection for his home.
“The council is now looking at legalising those illegal connections. This is still in the consideration phase at the moment.
“Legalising these illegal connections would mean that we do not press charges against the people that we find to have illegally connected to our system.
“We will come and assess the connection and if it is up to standard we legalise it, and install our own meter so that we are able to charge and generate money from that,” he said.
However, he said if this proposal went ahead, illegal connections would have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis and some would be removed.
“There are some connections that we find are depriving other areas of water supply.
“The connection sucks out all the water that is destined for other households.”
He said the council was given about R15 million by the provincial government to invest in increasing their water extraction capacity at St Helen’s Rock and the municipality has also expanded the capacity at the purification plant.
“That is why we are able to process more water and, as such, we have been able to address the water demand problem.
“There will be instances where an area is without water, but that is as a result of the ageing pipes that we are replacing incrementally.
“You will find that there is water in the pipe, but the pipe is broken,” he said.
IFP councillor Sifundo Ngwane said there was some merit to the proposal of legalising illegal connections, particularly in impoverished areas.
“What we have said as the IFP is that for the rural areas, there should at least be a flat rate.”
DA councillor Leonard Ngcobo said they had seen a slight improvement in water supply and production and the capacity of the uMzimkhulu storage and Bhobhoyi water treatment works had improved but there was still a challenge in rural areas.