Access to water in South Africa is a right for all the citizens, Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu said during the opening of reservoir three and the recommissioning of aqueduct one by the Umgeni Water.
Mchunu was addressing the public who attended the event at the Durban Heights Water Treatment Plant on Friday.
“Water in South Africa and access to it is a right for each and every citizen in the country. I am going to emphasize that each urban area has taps and rural community gets one communal tap,” Mchunu said.
“We must all work together, water is life and a right to all [the people]. These pipes in this area have been elevated by several pillars to ensure that they are high enough to remain stable.”
He urged his audience to work with the government, saying: “In this process, we have learned to work with each other, we have realised the power of working together and we have learned that we achieve more when we work together.
“We will make sure this collaboration grows in the sector and we will make sure that it works. I am putting a lot of emphasis on working together, especially in the water sector, because we understand that as much as it may look like a small job to fix pipes, in essence it is not as easy as it looks
Aqueducts one and two were severely damaged during the floods that battered parts of KwaZulu-Natal in April and May 2022. The reservoir was taken offline in 2019 for repairs due to safety concerns identified at the water storage structure.
The Durban Heights reservoir three is a 350ml reservoir outside of the Durban CBD and supplies drinking water to more than 500 000 people in the city and surrounding areas.
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