The Mercury reports that as the eThekwini Municipality battles to supply water to communities, it has emerged that more than half of the positions in the unit responsible for the delivery of water and sanitation to communities are vacant.

The Auditor General of SA, Tsakani Maluleke, recently indicated that her office did not understand why eThekwini had such a high number of vacancies in this unit, considering its size, location, and the budget of the municipality. The municipality has close to 25,000 workers and a budget of more than R60 billion. The findings on vacancies in eThekwini have triggered concerns among councillors, as the municipality is facing a serious water crisis, with many communities affected by prolonged outages resulting from water leaks, ageing infrastructure, and vandalism of this critical infrastructure. ActionSA councillor Zwakele Mncwango lamented that this is a serious issue: “We have been raising this issue on water and sanitation; hence, we (the city) cannot even deal with the issue of sanitation because there are no technical capabilities in the unit. It was proven when the municipality outsourced the function of looking after its (water treatment works) to uMngeni-uThukela Water.” Mdu Nkosi, chairperson of the Trading Services Committee, which oversees water and sanitation, said there would be an engagement between the city manager and officials in the water and sanitation unit to address the issues of vacancies raised by the AG.

• Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Thami Magubane at The Mercury

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