A spokesperson for the Amathole District Municipality, Nonceba Madikizela-Vuso, said that since the beginning of November the municipality had to deal with “numerous cases of vandalism” that had caused extensive damage to the pipeline from the Fish River.

She said the suspects are striking workers from their municipality.

Early in November, she said, a team was working on vandalised valves that supply water to Bedford. “This happened after the team had just completed a repair of a vandalised pipeline from the Fish River. It is suspected that these acts of vandalism are committed by striking municipal workers.”

During the next four weeks pipes were hacked, pipe joints were forced apart and valves were damaged. The pipeline from the Fish River that brings water to Bedford and Adelaide was damaged. Since the beginning of December, pipelines at the Bedford Stadium and the pipeline to Adelaide have been damaged, and valves at the Grahamstown Reservoir were destroyed.

Madikizela-Vuso added that there had been similar attacks all over their district. 

“We are experiencing these attacks almost every second day, making it difficult to maintain the water system functioning at 100%.”

She added that as they did not have “any spare water tankers idling around”, water tankers had been rerouted to Bedford from other areas.

A case of tampering with essential infrastructure had been opened at the Bedford police station.

“There is an ongoing analysis and assessment of the total cost of damage caused, as these incidents are a daily occurrence not only in Bedford but across the district.”

She said the strike was an illegal one and they were engaging with the South African Municipal Workers’ Union to resolve it.

A councillor for the Democratic Alliance in the town, Cecilia Auld, said parts of Bedford had had no reticulated water since Wednesday 2 December and had been dependent on water tankers.

She had opened the criminal case of tampering with essential infrastructure after taking legal advice.

“As fast as the workers repair the pipes, the striking workers are breaking them. You can see that those involved have some knowledge of where to do the most damage. It is quite clear that they know how the infrastructure works,” she said. 

“The damage they are doing cannot be repaired in days. It takes hours. It must be very hard on the workers performing the repairs, because just as they finish the vandals will strike somewhere else. The police have a list of suspects. They know who is behind this.”

She said the strike by municipal workers had been ongoing for some time. They are demanding a 6.25% increase, the removal of the municipal manager and an end to outsourcing.

She said a water tanker arrived in town on Sunday and would fill JoJo tanks that had been supplied to the town as part of the Covid-19 relief campaign to make sure that households have water.

“In the next few days people are going to start arriving home for the festive season and I don’t know what we are going to do if we don’t have water,” she said.

Humanitarian organisation Gift of the Givers has also been supplying the town with water during the outages.

The ongoing vandalism and water outages come as the two towns register a sharp increase in the number of Covid-19 cases, with nine new cases in one weekend, including a baby that is only a few months old.

According to the latest epidemiological report for the Eastern Cape, the district has a case-positivity rate of around 37% and an incidence rate of 147/100,000. DM/MC

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