Water and Sanitation Mayco member Zahid Badroodien said maintenance teams were reliant on the availability of Law Enforcement to proceed due to safety concerns.
The City has cited safety as one of the contributing factors making it difficult for their teams to attend to basic service delivery-related complaints in Heinz Park, near Philippi.
This is where residents are fed up with living in sewage filth, with drain water flowing in the streets and raising serious health concerns.
They have described the situation as a complete breakdown of service delivery, particularly in waste management and sanitation.
“Toilets in many homes have been non-operational for over three weeks due to blocked sewer lines. This has forced residents to live with overflowing sewage in their homes, creating an unimaginable health and dignity crisis.
The situation is very bad, sewage is our biggest headache in this place. We call the City, reference after reference, it doesn’t end. Everything is blocked, it’s been going on for years, it’s just getting worse and worse. The line regularly gets blocked, the drains and sewage push up and goes down the streets, you cannot even eat in your house or go outside,” said 67-year-old pensioner and community activist, David George.
Officials would come and collect him to escort them, and it would get cleaned until it happened again because the root cause, which seemed to be the infrastructure, was not being addressed.
Resident Francis Petersen, 51, has been staying in the community for nearly 30 years and claimed her grandchildren and a guest from England had already ended up in hospital with stomach problems due to the sewage.
“I tried to get help from numerous people in the City.
“The drain is right in front of my house, everything comes out by my house. We tried to get private people to work inside our house, but they can’t do anything because the problem is outside. It’s the municipal line, they cannot work on a municipal line,” she said.
In emails to the City, residents expressed a willingness to work with the officials to address the issues, accusing the City of using safety or the term “red zone” as an excuse not to provide service delivery.
“We have always supported the City by providing car escorts to facilitate safe access and have prioritised the safety of your staff. We urge the City to leverage this support to help expedite essential tasks in our area,” the email read.
Petersen added: “We will escort them, we will help them.”
Water and Sanitation Mayco member Zahid Badroodien said maintenance teams were reliant on the availability of Law Enforcement to proceed due to safety concerns.
“The Water and Sanitation Directorate recently completed two major sewer pipe repairs in the area that were contributing to some of the overflows.
“The daily working conditions in this area are difficult due to safety concerns, which makes the tasks of our maintenance teams reliant on the availability of Law Enforcement to proceed.
“The depot has to arrange Law Enforcement to accompany teams when conducting maintenance on the various sewer lines in this area.
We had to wait on the availability of Law Enforcement. Law Enforcement has since confirmed its availability.
Our operations teams (were) therefore in Heinz Park, Friday, 13 December and (will be there) next Wednesday, 18 December to address the issues as far as possible and also monitor if additional slots can be made available to us,” he said.
In cases where cleansing and refuse collection services were delayed, City spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said: “Residents are assured every effort is made to ensure services will be provided in the soonest, safest time possible to prioritise the safety of staff and service delivery to our residents.
We encourage residents to use the solid waste services provided to store their waste until their bins are serviced. Residents can also apply to have more than one bin on their property should one bin not be enough to store their waste.”
Cape Times