Emfuleni water crisis: Cadre deployment costs SA huge amount of already scarce water

Emfuleni Municipality in Gauteng complains it is ‘understaffed and under-resourced’ which is why it has spent R65m on overtime for water entity workers… but still loses more than half of its water at a cost of R500 million per year. According to the municipality, the water entity could not handle all the reports during working hours and had to pay workers overtime. Would we be too cynical to wonder if the workforce found itself “overwhelmed” during daylight hours, but could somehow get through the night at “time and a half”? Or would it be unfair…

Emfuleni Municipality in Gauteng complains it is ‘understaffed and under-resourced’ which is why it has spent R65m on overtime for water entity workers… but still loses more than half of its water at a cost of R500 million per year.

According to the municipality, the water entity could not handle all the reports during working hours and had to pay workers overtime.

Would we be too cynical to wonder if the workforce found itself “overwhelmed” during daylight hours, but could somehow get through the night at “time and a half”?

Or would it be unfair to them for us to wonder if the repairs they performed were deliberately “underdone”, so they could be called back and earn more overtime?

If you think that’s unfair, look at Eskom, where the exact same kind of thing is happening in a process we would call ‘overtime farming’.

It may also be that the Emfuleni water entity is exhausted because there is not enough money to pay for staff or resources.

ALSO READ: Emfuleni blames R65m overtime bill on lack of staff and resources

The council, however, continues to raise money from taxpayers and it also fails to pay its bulk water supply bills (it owes Rand Water R1.5 billion)… so we wonder: where did all the money go?

What is happening in Emfuleni is unfortunately not the exception.

In the majority of ANC-run towns and villages across the country, the collapse of services is inexorable.

The looting of funds and the deployment of incompetent ANC cadres in critical positions in water supply and sewage has meant that maintenance – and replacement of old and crumbling pipes and other infrastructure – has almost ceased.

What is truly worrying is that huge amounts of water are going to be wasted in a water-scarce country, while people don’t even have a reliable water supply.