Editor’s Comment: Municipal maintenance fund a key priority
Hard lessons were learnt this month when the non-maintenance of municipal infrastructure resulted in a catastrophic nine-day power outage at the Port of Richards Bay.
AS corporates count the costs, running into hundreds of millions of rands, and officials continue to shift blame, one glaring fact is beyond dispute.
The faulty cables between the respective substations had been in service for 38 years and had reached the end of their 30-year lifespan in 2005.
Despite assessment reports indicating the urgent need for infrastructure upgrade, routine maintenance was not carried out because of ‘insufficient funding’.
And the City of uMhlathuze will now have to pay the price.
Apart from the R13-million approved last week for cable repair and an emergency temporary overhead line, funding amounting to R73.5-million to replace current cables, will have to be sourced.
The timing could not have been more perfect in light of the current local scenario. The Consulting Engineers of South Africa (Cesa) last week called for the creation of a dedicated fund to support the maintenance of municipal infrastructure.
Cesa said the failure of infrastructure as a result of poor maintenance was placing pressure on already strained municipal budgets.
This led to the disruption of services, which, in turn, had contributed to protest action and a decline in investor confidence.
‘Costs associated with maintenance are a fraction of reconstruction costs once the infrastructure has collapsed,’ said Cesa president Abe Thela.
A recent analysis by Municipal IQ revealed there were 155 service delivery protests in 2013 – a figure only slightly lower than the protest peak of 173 recorded in 2012. There had also been a surge in protest activity at the start of 2014, with many protests turning violent.
The organisation also appealed for greater priority to be given to the staffing of municipal maintenance teams, with emphasis on experienced technicians.
Such intervention mechanisms are critical as the City, along with many other municipalities in Zululand, do not have a proper asset replacement, refurbishment and preventative maintenance plan.
