Durban — The DA in KwaZulu-Natal has called on Premier Nomusa Dube-Ncube to invoke section 139 of the Constitution for the eThekwini Municipality’s failure to deal with its growing sewage crisis.
The call came from DA KZN Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs spokesperson Martin Meyer, who said the call forms part of the DA’s motion that was debated in the KZN legislature on Thursday.
Section 139 of the Constitution states that when a municipality cannot or does not fulfil an executive obligation in terms of the Constitution or legislation, the relevant provincial executive may intervene by taking any appropriate steps to ensure fulfilment of that obligation.
“It is clear that eThekwini Municipality cannot fulfil its obligation to provide its almost four million residents with clean water while providing them with a safe and clean environment,” Meyer said.
He said the DA believes that members of the legislature have a legal and moral obligation to intervene. Certainly, the municipality’s ANC-run coalition government is not doing anything.
Meyer said that the first measurement of a municipality is if it can get the basics rights. This includes water, electricity, road conditions and waste disposal.
“In this regard eThekwini is a failed metro,” Meyer said.
He said that while the floods in the province have compounded matters, the problematic state of eThekwini’s wastewater works predates this.
“The DA is also aware that eThekwini did not come close to spending 8% of its budget on maintenance, as prescribed by the Treasury,” Meyer said.
He said that eThekwini is not only facing a sewage and water crisis as a result of the floods. Many displaced people are still living in squalid conditions in community halls, numerous schools are not fully functional and oThongathi (Tongaat) remains without water. The SA Human Rights Commission report on eThekwini’s response to the floods is damning and backs up everything the DA has said and continues to say.
The question, said Meyer, is why is this ANC-run provincial government turning a blind eye to eThekwini’s continued failures while peoples’ lives are being endangered? And what is it doing to ensure that R1 billion promised by the national government in flood aid materialises?
“There is a stench hanging over eThekwini and it is not just the stench of sewage. It is also the stench of a failing and dying ANC,” Meyer said.
“The premier must act. She cannot sit by idly and allow the failures of eThekwini to define her term. The people of our province are looking to her and her government for help.”
Daily News