Duthuni Tshiawelo residents say they want water now

For the past eight months, residents of Duthuni Tshiawelo have not seen a drop of water from their taps.

This has been squarely blamed on a faulty pump in the area which the Vhembe District Municipality (VDM) has allegedly been ignoring and not providing a solution.

The residents have done all in their power to raise their dissatisfaction, but nothing has happened to solve their problem. To survive, the water-starved residents have resorted to using dirty water from nearby streams, which they share with animals.

This has led to many of them reportedly falling sick with waterborne diseases. Tired of waiting for the unknown, the angry and frustrated residents took to the streets and barricaded the main road from Nzhelele to Thohoyandou with stones and other rubble on Tuesday.

The residents’ leader, Ms Joyce Raphunga, said they were tired of empty promises from the municipality, who kept on promising that they would get water, which was not forthcoming.

"We have waited for far too long; it is almost a year without our having clean water here. Some of us are now sick because of this dirty water we are using. We deserve a better service in this area as we are not second-class citizens," she said.

Raphunga said they had decided as a community to close all roads leading to the village and the town of Thohoyandou while seeking an ear from the municipality. "We are tired as residents. We have decided to give them a hard time by peacefully closing the main road from Nzhelele to Thohoyandou. Maybe they will listen to us, and if they do not, we will stay here until we get water to drink," said Raphunga.

Another resident, who preferred to remain anonymous, said it was not surprising that the municipality was not able to give service to the community, “as what they know best is corruption”.

VDM spokesperson Moss Shivambu said they had not known about the problem, but as they had become aware, they would immediately dispatch their technical teams to the area to solve the problem.

"We are promising that we will start dealing with this issue as a matter of urgency, but we cannot promise as to when the community will get drinking water," he said.

At the time of our going to press on Wednesday morning, the road was temporarily opened, but the demonstrators vowed to close it again if they did not get a favourable answer soon.

News - Date: 23 November 2018

Elmon Tshikhudo

Elmon Tshikhudo started off as a photographer. He developed an interest in writing and started submitting articles to local as well as national publications. He became part of the Limpopo Mirror family in 2005 and was a permanent part of the news team until 2019.

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