Public Protector Advocate Kholeka Gcaleka is pleased with efforts made by the City of Tshwane municipality at the Rooiwaal Water Treatment Plant in Hammanskraal, Tshwane.
Gcaleka visited the plant on Friday afternoon to gauge for herself progress made by the City of Tshwane in complying with the remedial action that was ordered by her office in October last year.
“The truth is we need to acknowledge that since we released our report as the Public Protector’s office there has been much progress on this project,” said Gcaleka
Gcaleka announced that the City of Tshwane has promised to conduct quality assurance regarding the Rooiwaal project and get back to her office as soon as possible.
“We actually interact with the City of Tshwane much more regularly regarding the Rooiwaal project,” she said after she actually went on a walkabout of the plant guided by City of Tshwane officials.
But she cautioned that before her office can say there is indeed progress at Rooiwaal, it must interact with the community as well to hear what they have to say.
She explained that when interacting with the community her office must take something tangible to the community to back up its assertion regarding progress at Rooiwaal.
After actually inspecting the plant Gcaleka said the following: “The City is looking at different technologies to improve the system and having a permanent structure to provide water to the community,” she said.
She indicated her understanding that while the city was still busy with the above -mentioned tasks, temporary measures have to be used to provide water to the residents and that those temporary measure are water tankers.
“I have been told that the Rooiwaal project will be completed after twelve months,” she said.
In October last year the Public Protector’s office ordered the City of Tshwane to take remedial action to set out measures to address deficiencies and shortcomings at the Rooiwaal Water Treatment Plant.
The purpose of Gcaleka’s visit was to check whether the City of Tshwane was complying with the remedial action as issued by her office.
The Public Protector’s office was approached by concerned residents of Hammanskraal to intervene back in 2020 as they had spent many years without potable water that they could use for cooking, drinking and washing.
By then independent investigations had already revealed that the cause of the contaminated water emerging from their taps was as a result of the Rooiwaal Water Treatment Plant which was not working properly due to structural defects.
“This plant alone is not enough we need to capacitate this plant and that is a longterm project that is R4 billion project that need to be invested.
We don’t have new development as a result of having this area not being fully capacitated,” said city of Tshwane MMC for Utilities Themba Fosi.
Fosi said we are running with the issues of the Hammanskraal and provision of portable water.
We will then be going to the second phase and third phase this is to capacitate this plant and make sure that whatever that we are getting it is fully covered by this plant so we can be able to take out the effluence to the Temba treatment plant in a proper fashion.
“We welcome the visit by the public protector to the Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment plant and we are also shocked and dissapointed that the city of Tshwane will only be going back to Hammanskraal now just because the public protector has done the visit,” said ELF-South Africa President Hulisane Mane.
Mani said the city of Tshwane did a commitment that they going to provide roving water tanks that will be regularly providing clean, safe water to the residents of Hammanskraal and they fail to honor that.
“The condition at Rooiwal Wastewater Treatment plant it has not changed, our people are still exposed to cholera and we are saying that’s unacceptable because those are the basic services that the city must provide to the residents and clearly they fail and clearly they do not have a plan,” frustrated Mani said.