Half a million people in the Free State Goldfields region experienced the devastating results of municipal thievery and Ace Magashule’s cadre deployment legacy, when taps were dry since Friday. Today, a full half a million people in areas such as Welkom, Odendaalsrus, Virginia, Riebeeckstad and Ventersburg were without running water.
All the reservoirs are empty and plans were desperately being made to shift around and fix old water pumps. The direct cause of the crisis is a pump that broke and the water supplier, Sedibeng Water, being left without funds because of non payment of debt by the local ANC controlled municipality.
Peter, a local resident told us that it is now 4 days and 4 nights that they are without municipal water. They have to manually carry water in buckets to use the toilet. Worse however, is that in Riebeeckstad there is no drinking water for sale, and in Welkom the stock is almost all sold out. Drinking water is a very basic
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