Why thousands of water leaks are slipping through the cracks

Crippling staff and vehicle shortages in Nelson Mandela Bay metro’s water services subdirectorate blamed for delayed responses

In the first half of 2024, the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality struggled to address thousands of water leaks due to staff and vehicle shortages, with 9,169 unresolved cases carried over by the end of June.

The metro must fill 200 vacancies and secure 97 vehicles in the water services subdirectorate to solve the problem.

The details were included in a report tabled at a municipal public accounts committee meeting on Tuesday. According to the report, the city has a budget shortfall of R50m from its operating budget and R100m from its capital budget.

In the interim, the metro uses 38 municipal teams to deal with losses and 200 “water ambassadors” to look for leaks, report them and conduct awareness campaigns.

“The municipality has appointed staff to deal with the operations and maintenance of infrastructure to improve efficiency and service delivery,” the report said.

Each team included a plumber, an artisan plumber and two general workers for bulk and distribution leaks and repairs.

The report highlighted that about 1,400km of the metro’s 4,700km pipeline network is more than 50 years old. In the last half of 2023, the metro had, on a monthly average, carried over 1,285 leaks. A total of 17,295 leaks were repaired during the period.

However, in the first half of 2024, this increased to a monthly average of 5,030 leaks carried over.

Only 7,409 leaks were repaired during the period.

The highest carry-over figure of 9,169 leaks was recorded in December 2023.

The report does not give a reason for the surge in leaks being carried over monthly since January.

DA councillor Jason Engelbrecht said the city’s internal teams were addressing fewer water leaks each week than was needed. “There are 38 teams, and 300 water leaks attended to every week, which is less than 10 leaks per team,” he said.

“We are told there is an external team that does the same work but the internal team is required to do 1,200 leaks month so I don’t understand how this works.”

ACDP councillor Lance Grootboom wanted to know the city’s short-term plan for dealing with ageing infrastructure. “The report talks about our pipeline being more than 50 years old. What are the priorities in terms of timelines on how we will deal with this?” he said.

Responding to councillors, infrastructure and engineering acting executive director Joseph Tsatsire said interventions were made to ensure lleaks were reported.

“Depending on where you are, we deploy the necessary interventions,” he said. “There is huge apathy to report leaks in disadvantaged townships, which necessitates the [water ambassadors’] intervention.

“Regarding the 38 teams, there’s not always a linear outcome in terms of production on a daily basis. There’s quite a number of operating inefficiencies in our system. We’re dealing with issues related to the fleet which hamper the production of the teams but we are dealing with them.”

He said the city had an ongoing capital project with an annual budget of R50m that was used to replace pipes.

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