Sub-council 2 is pushing to have water-management devices fitted in City of Cape Town rental-stock flats, specifically newly built ones in Scottsdene.
The water-management devices save water by switching off the supply when they detect a leak and allocating households their daily portion of water.
The issue first surfaced at a sub-council meeting earlier this year but came up again at the meeting on Thursday last week, when chairman Grant Twigg touched on the water crisis facing the city in his opening address.
“It’s becoming more and more serious,” he said. “We must just continue spreading the message among the communities. Some people think we are busy with a comedy because they are still not taking it seriously, but it is serious.”
Mr Twigg said the mayor had called for residents to share their water-saving ideas.
“We are looking at various ways of saving water and have asked individuals for suggestions of what we can do. Whatever ideas people have can be brought to the attention of the City,” he said.
The meeting heard that a request for the devices to be installed in council’s rented flats had been sent to Suzette Little, the mayoral committee member for area north.
Acting sub-council manager Pieter Grobbelaar said: “We must ask the water management device system role players to give us a proper report with regard to the possible implementation so that we can discuss this matter with the councillors and really take this matter forward.”
In an email to Northern News in May, Mr Twigg was at pains to point out that the installation of the water-management devices in city rental stock was not a punitive measure but a necessary one to “secure our scarce water resources”. He noted that the units had already been installed in City rental housing stock in Scottsdene and Scottsville.
Ward 101 councillor Luyanda Mbele, who has allocated R100 000 from his allocation budget for pavements in Bloekombos, asked whether the City would “come to the party with its own capital budget”.
He said no pavements had been built in the ward for a decade, so the community had decided to use the ward allocation money. But R100 000 hadn’t bought much pavement: 150m to be precise.
“That means that not even one road in our community is going to be finished,” said Mr Mbele.
Mr Twigg replied that all areas were having the same challenge. “It’s not only Bloekombos; it’s all areas and places like Northpine as well.”
He encouraged Mr Mbele to
“fight” for a bigger piece of the budget. “We all eating from the same cake, ’* groot koek. That cake gets split for various projects. It is your responsibility as well as mine to go and fight for a bigger piece of that cake,” he said.
Ward 6 councillor Simpiwe Nonkeyezana asked why there was “no movement” on the Scottsdene waste water treatment works, which he called a “decoration” on the capital expenditure agenda.
“Why do we keep budgeting for these items if they are not going to be used? The money can be used somewhere else,” he said.
Mr Twigg replied that there had been a problem with the tender which had since been resolved.
According to the law enforcement report, the district lost five law enforcement officers because their contracts were terminated.
There were now only eight officers to cover the area and that would likely lead to a reduction in patrols and fines.
Mr Twigg recommended using CCTV cameras to supplement the service.
Councillor Marian Nieuwoudt had tabled a motion in May requesting a report on the amount of revenue earned from development charges in the area.
The subsequent City report said developers only paid these charges for bulk infrastructure, the money going to fund new capital projects.
The report said R88m had been gathered and R79m spent from the revenue generated by development charges in the past 17 years, during which time R408m worth of infrastructure had been built in Kraaifontein.
Council, the report noted, sometimes did deals with developers to build infrastructure.
The projects included several road interchanges and extensions, including the Bottelary/R300 interchange and the Saxdown Road extension.
Mr Twigg asked whether any of the revenue fed back into the City’s public transport budget, saying: “We are expanding but we are not necessarily getting important transport infrastructure like MyCiTi.”
Johan Snyman, from the City, replied that transport was funded from a completely different “stream”.
“None of the money goes into a fund for transport,” he said.
