Compliance and enforcement measures will be tightened against the City of Tshwane (CoT) to ensure it complies with its obligation to deal with low effluent standards and provide safe drinking water to affected communities, the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) assured.

An action plan to turn around the poor state of the Rooiwal wastewater treatment works and Temba wastewater treatment works have not yielded any positive results, as the plans were not implemented in line with the directives issued by the DWS or the action plan presented to the Portfolio Committee on Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation by the CoT, said DWS acting director-general Deborah Mochotlhi.

The department had painted a bleak picture of the state of the treatment works during a presentation to the committee on March 9, 2021.

The portfolio committee had, following an oversight visit to the CoT in 2019 and in February 2020, instructed the City to urgently resolve the water and wastewater challenges which persisted to pose a health risk for the community.

Mochotlhi attributed the notable lack of progress in resolving the water and wastewater challenges mainly to instability of leadership in the City, saying this has had a negative impact on progress since the Department has had to engage anew on the intervention on several occasions.

“The City has cited lack of funds for not implementing the action plan and the City is said to have approached the Development Bank of Southern Africa for funding.”

The Rooiwal wastewater treatment works has been found to be overloaded, with poor sludge management and no schedule for operations and maintenance, while an audit and inspection of the Temba wastewater treatment works found that communities were still supplied with poor water quality and that the water tankers used to supply water to affected communities do not meet the demand, besides other challenges.

“In view of the numerous non-compliances, DWS will proceed with the court case opened against the CoT as per Section 53 of the National Water Act,” Mochotlhi told the committee, reiterating that, going forward, the CoT must prioritise the review of its maintenance and operations manual, the appointment of qualified process controllers to address staff shortages at their works, and the appointment of the security personnel at the works to address the theft and vandalism issues.