Deputy Minister David Mahlobo commends progress to resolve water and sanitation challenges in Lekwa Local Municipality

Water and Sanitation Deputy Minister, Mr David Mahlobo has expressed satisfaction on the progress that has is being made in implementing the water and sanitation ministerial interventions to address long-standing challenges of sewer spillages and water quality in Lekwa Local Municipality.

Deputy Minister Mahlobo together with senior officials from the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), accompanied by the Executive Mayor of Gert Sibande District, Mr Walter Mngomezulu handed over completed sanitation projects to Cllr Sifiso Mngemezulu, Executive Mayor of Lekwa Local Municipality, and further visited the Standerton Water Treatment Works (WTW) to assess progress of its refurbishment to return it to full optimisation, and is able to produce quality drinking water.

Lekwa Municipality has experienced infrastructure failure for both water and sanitation that resulted into excessive sewer spillages, exposing the communities to health and safety hazards. The spillages also contaminated the Vaal River, prompting DWS to impose directives to the municipality.

Last year, the Standerton Regional court imposed a hefty fine of R70 million to the municipality for causing significant pollution to the environment and for failure to comply with compliance notices and directives issued by DWS.

The situation required immediate attention and DWS intervened and identified intervention projects within Lekwa Municipality, and Gert Sibande District Municipality was appointed in 2023 to be the implementing agent of the projects worth R350 Million funded by DWS through its Regional Bulk Infrastructure Grant (RBIG).

The interventions projects were a response to address ageing infrastructure, operational inefficiencies, and lack of access to water services in certain areas of the municipality. The projects entailed the unblocking and replacing of collapsed sewer manholes and realignment of damaged sewer pipes that caused sewer overflows throughout the municipality.

Deputy Minister Mahlobo handed over Steijn and Taljaard Sewer pumpstations to Lekwa Municipality. The pumpstations will ensure that sewer from Ward 3 in Standerton, Meyerville and the surrounding settlements is pumped to Standerton Waste Water Treatment Works (WWTW) for further processing.

“This municipality was battling and could not executive its mandated responsibility to provide basic water services and ensure that people are not exposed to running sewer in the streets. However, as part of broader government intervention, the Ministry of Water and Sanitation intervened to address the challenges. We had to pull all our resources working with the Mpumalanga Provincial Government to resolve the issues that has plagued this municipality for a long time. The District Mayor had to assemble a very capable team to deal with the issues that were mainly about the operational deficiencies of the infrastructure. As a result, the Ministerial intervention has yielded the results, and we are confident that the municipality will continue to improve the lives of the people of Lekwa,” said Deputy Minister Mahlobo.

Deputy Minister Mahlobo said the refurbishment and upgrading of the sewer pumpstations and the Standerton and Morgenzon Waste Water Treatment Works has also contributed to the resolution of excessive sewer spillages within the municipality. He said the upgrades will also limit a negative impact on the environment and curb pollution of the Vaal River and improve its ecology.
The project of refurbishment of Standerton Water Treatment Works is currently under way and the scope of works includes rehabilitation of the buildings, upgrading of the pumping main from the abstraction point and upgrading of the gravity pipeline from the recycling dams.

The water treatment works has a design capacity of supplying 37 megalitres of water per day (ml/d), but the upgrades will improve its water supply to 60 ml/pd. Civil and mechanical works are at more than 60 per cent complete, and the project is anticipated to be operational towards the end of October this year.

For more information, contact:
Wisane Mavasa
Spokesperson for the Department of Water and Sanitation 
Cell: 060 561 8935 

Themba Khoza 
Cell: 066 301 6962

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