OR Tambo District Municipality has put aside about R160m towards installing pipelines and building water reservoirs to distribute clean running water to nearly 20 rural villages in Ngqeleni and Libode.
Some of the villages were heavily hit by drought, which ravaged many parts of the Eastern Cape three years ago.
Other villages have no water infrastructure whatsoever and have never had access to clean tap water.
The district authority last week published a notice calling for interested service providers to bid for projects to build a series of reservoirs.
Ngqeleni was identified among the worst hit drought areas in the district in 2015.
District municipal spokesperson Ayongezwa Lungisa said the the projects would take an estimated 12 months to complete.
“And these projects are expected to start in March 2019 and they are to be completed in March 2020,” he said.
Lungisa said the projects only formed part of what he termed “secondary bulk services” to help increase access to clean water.
He said that since the launch of the R5bn Presidential Intervention Project in King Sabata Dalindyebo local municipality by former president Jacob Zuma in 2009, several projects had been implemented as part of bulk water services provisioning in towns and surrounding areas.
Some even passed through villages which previously did not have water.
Lungisa said the clean water supplied from the reservoirs would ensure that diseases such as cholera would be “a thing of the past” for villagers.
According to the notice published in the Dispatch, the new projects will include the construction of the Emapeleni to Bomvini rising main, which will distribute water to Bomvini, Mncane, Mngaye and Matanzima villages.
Lungisa said the villages already received water via the Ngqeleni 27 village project but that the additional reservoirs would ensure a steady supply of clean water.
Residents of villages such as Ntilini, Tukela and Buntingville will however be able to receive clean water for the first time through the Mdoni to Ntilini project.
Villages that have no water supply, such as Mamfengwini, Tyarha, Moyeni and Mpangana villages, will finally receive water through the construction of the Tyarha gravity main to Empangana main.
“There is also a project that will provide reticulation to the villages,” Lungisa said.
Nyandeni mayor Mesuli Ngqondwana welcomed the water projects in Libode and Ngqeleni. He said many water schemes in the municipal area depended on boreholes, which dried up when drought hit.
Also, in the past, government had implemented reticulation systems including water taps, without identifying water sources.
As a result, many stood useless for years...