The Vhembe District Municipality (VDM) has assured residents of the Campbell Township in Musina that their water concerns will soon be something of the past. The VDM says that water will be pumped through a booster pump from a reservoir at Bergview. A service provider was appointed on 5 September this year to ensure that Campbell residents receive water from the Dikkop reservoir.

This plan of action comes after Campbell residents insisted on knowing why three reservoirs, situated only a couple of metres away from the Campbell Township, were not used to supply water to the residents, who are affected by constant water shortages.

Two of the reservoirs were built long ago by the Messina Transvaal Development Corporation Mine. When the mine closed down in 1992, they were handed over to the Musina Local Municipality, along with the houses it had built in the community. The municipality built the third reservoir in 2006.

“It seems the VDM is trying to save money for other purposes, leaving the community with inconsistent water supply,” said Sewani Kaunda, a community leader in Campbell. He said that the residents had tried to find out from the VDM on several occasions why they had stopped using these reservoirs but never received a satisfactory response, until now.

The VDM’s spokesperson, Mr Matodzi Ralushai, told this newspaper that when Musina Local Municipality had taken over the reservoirs from the mines, they had already been in a derelict state. He said they were made of “thin steel material” and had corroded to a point where they could no longer be used safely for drinking water.

According to Ralushai, the third reservoir, made of concrete, was built by the Musina Local Municipality to serve the then still-small Campbell population back in 2002. But the community had grown to such an extent since then that the reservoir could not meet the water demand for the current Campbell population. “The water from Dikkop reservoir will be enough to supply the Campbell Township without any stoppages. It will only be affected if there is a common problem in other areas, either from the source or pump stations,” said Ralushai.