The OR Tambo district municipality has appointed new contractors to complete stalled water projects in the area to speed up the provision of clean, potable water to residents, particularly in rural villages.
The heavy rains that battered the province throughout the festive season continued this week, with flooding affecting parts of the rain-ravaged region, and there’s still more to come.Homes and infrastructure have been damaged, with even steel railway lines being washed away by the relentless downpour.
The Eastern Cape has the second-highest percentage of households in the country a whopping 19.5% who have no access to piped water in their areas. And many of these households have to share their water source dams, rivers and streams in rural areas with animals.
An investigation into a lucrative tender between the OR Tambo district municipality and waste management company Tulsaspark has indicated that the council racked up more than R15m in suspected irregular expenditure.