{"id":257956,"date":"2023-04-20T18:23:37","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T16:23:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/gift-of-the-givers-brings-much-needed-water-relief-to-makhanda-homes\/"},"modified":"2023-04-20T18:23:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T16:23:37","slug":"gift-of-the-givers-bring-much-needed-water-to-makhanda-homes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/gift-of-the-givers-bring-much-needed-water-to-makhanda-homes\/","title":{"rendered":"Gift of the Givers bring much-needed water to Makhanda homes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"article_body\">\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/loyiso_dyongman\/img-20230328-wa0006.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"warn_big\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/gift-of-the-givers-bring-much-needed-water-to-makhanda-homes.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Makhanda residents bring their containers to collect water from the Gift of the Givers tanker on Thursday. Photos: Loyiso Dyongman<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Donkey carts, vehicles and scores of people with young children from Makhanda queued to fill their containers at a water tanker provided by the Gift of the Givers on Thursday.<\/li>\n<li>The organisation has been trucking water and much-needed disaster relief to communities as the Makana Local Municipality battles a crippling water crisis.<\/li>\n<li>In a statement on Thursday, the municipality warned residents that water would be turned off for the day, though taps have been dry in many high-lying areas in Makhanda for days.<\/li>\n<li>But the dams have water and a residents\u2019 association blames the municipality for the water shortage.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Donkey carts, vehicles and scores of people with young children from Makhanda, Eastern Cape have been queuing to fill their containers at a water tanker provided by the Gift of the Givers on Thursday.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt class=\"leave\" height=\"1\" id=\"gu_counter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/gift-of-the-givers-bring-much-needed-water-to-makhanda-homes.gif\" width=\"1\"><\/p>\n<p>The organisation has been trucking water and much-needed disaster relief to communities as the Makana Local Municipality battles a crippling water crisis.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Thursday, the municipality warned residents that water would be turned off for the day. Though taps have been dry in many high-lying areas in Makhanda for four days. These parts of the town often don\u2019t get water even on the scheduled days they are meant to be supplied.<\/p>\n<p>The City has urged people to use water sparingly, once water is available, to prolong availability to all users. \u201cNight restrictions remain enforceable, in order to prolong water availability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The municipality said that there was \u201cmechanical problem on the intake valve of Howiesonspoort, which is being attended to\u201d and that water trucks would be sent to affected areas.<\/p>\n<p>Sibongile Mtshali, who lives in Hooggenoeg, said she waited for three hours for the municipality\u2019s water truck to arrive on Wednesday. She was carrying two 20-litre buckets filled with water when we spoke to her.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to drop these and get another two buckets. I don\u2019t want to suffer and be without water. I can\u2019t afford not to bathe. My kids do not go to school because of dirty school uniforms,\u201d said Mtsahli.<\/p>\n<p>Mvumeli Yako from Phumalani location told GroundUp that streets become chaotic once a water truck arrives. \u201cEveryone runs, grannies and little children. It\u2019s too hard!\u201d said Yako.<\/p>\n<p>Tammy Bennet from Donkin Street in town said that even on days that they are meant to have access to water, the taps merely drip.<\/p>\n<p>Anita Manyati from Vukani location said they have not had water since Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Gift of the Givers project manager Ali Sablay told GroundUp that the organisation had deployed its water tanker truck with 10,000 litres of water to help alleviate the impact in the worst-affected areas.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"bigger-image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/media\/uploads\/images\/photographers\/loyiso_dyongman\/glen_melville_dam.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/gift-of-the-givers-bring-much-needed-water-to-makhanda-homes-1.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">This is the Glen Melville D am in Makhanda on Wednesday 12 April. Makana Residents Association secretary, Tim Bull, believes that the issue is not that the dams are empty but rather with the municipal administration.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur water tanker does three rounds a day and sometimes four rounds providing water to the communities of Makhanda. Our truck is deployed every second day in Makhanda.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur borehole at Ntsika Secondary School in Extension 7 is working around the clock providing the community with clean drinking water,\u201d said Sablay.<\/p>\n<p>Makana Residents Association secretary, Tim Bull, believes that the issue is not that the dams are empty but rather with the municipal administration. \u201cI visited the dams recently. Howienspoort is at 100% and Settlers 45%, in total this is more than a year\u2019s worth of water. It is not clear that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/urgently-needed-makhanda-water-project-six-years-behind-schedule\/\">James Kleynhans upgrade<\/a> will solve much until we have a functioning municipality,\u201d said Bull.<\/p>\n<p>He said the municipality\u2019s current response by alternating water on and off on certain days has only exacerbated their water woes. \u201cMakana employs seven plumbers, but they are heavily constrained from fixing leaks because most of their bakkies are at the workshop. They are also hampered because materials to fix pipes are not ordered in time, causing unnecessary delay and greater water loss,\u201d claims Bull.<\/p>\n<p>Municipal spokesperson Anele Mjekula did not respond to questions that were sent on 14 April.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"article_copyright\">\n<p>\u00a9 2023 GroundUp. This article is licensed under a <a href=\"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"license\">Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and GroundUp, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.<\/p>\n<p>We put an invisible pixel in the article so that we can count traffic to republishers. All analytics tools are solely on our servers. We do not give our logs to any third party. Logs are deleted after two weeks. We do not use any IP address identifying information except to count regional traffic. We are solely interested in counting hits, <b>not tracking<\/b> users. If you republish, please do not delete the invisible pixel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/gift-of-the-givers-bring-much-needed-water-to-makhanda-homes.jpg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/\">Source: GroundUp<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Makhanda residents bring their containers to collect water from the Gift of the Givers tanker on Thursday. Photos: Loyiso Dyongman Donkey carts, vehicles and scores of people with young children from Makhanda queued to fill their containers at a water tanker provided by the Gift of the Givers on Thursday. The organisation has been trucking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":257957,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9928,3247],"tags":[28001],"class_list":{"0":"post-257956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-groundup","8":"category-news","9":"tag-groundup","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/gift-of-the-givers-bring-much-needed-water-to-makhanda-homes.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/257957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}