What was supposed to be the final inspection tour of the Vhembe District Municipality’s borehole project west of Louis Trichardt, turned out to be unsatisfactory, according to Vhembe, and an embarrassment, according to AfriForum.
VDM spokesperson Mr Matodzi Ralushai said that the outcome of the final inspection tour on 7 November was that, out of the nine boreholes (also called the old boreholes), seven were pumping into the water system. “Vhembe is not satisfied with the function of all of these boreholes, since its objective is to ensure fully functional boreholes which will supply water without challenges. Vhembe, however, is satisfied with the functionality of the working boreholes and the other two are being attended to,” Ralushai said.
AfriForum Louis Trichardt chairperson Mr Wally Schultz and his committee accompanied the Vhembe delegation, the consulting engineers and the contractors on the final inspection tour. “We found that not all pumps were properly welded and bolted down and therefore could spin off their platforms,” Schultz said.
The state of the security measures was, however, the last straw for AfriForum. “These boreholes were supposed to be fully refurbished, with state-of-the-art new security to prevent theft and vandalism that have cost more than R5 million in recent times. At the first of the nine boreholes, there was no lock on the gate, only a piece of thin wire. The gate was unhinged and hanging by a few strands of wire. The telemetric security system was unplugged for the security guard’s phone charger and the cameras were not seen. The next four boreholes showed similar states of incompletion, so we aborted the ‘final’ inspection tour,” Schultz said. At the second borehole, they found that the security guard was living there, but was out "hunting something for the pot".
At a steering committee meeting held on 29 October, it was noted in the minutes that “four cameras were reported to have been installed and the other six were still outstanding and were to be done by 7 November.” It was also reported in the minutes that no incident had been reported since the deployment of security on site. Vhembe was asked whether they were satisfied with the security at the boreholes. “The appointed security personnel are doing their job and risk threats are minimized,” Ralushai said.
Schultz said that he was appalled at the fact that Vhembe’s project manager and his consulting project engineer had called for a final inspection tour before conducting an inspection tour themselves to see if the project had in fact been completed.
Besides the old boreholes, AfriForum said that the water project could not be complete without the drilling of three new boreholes near the Mowkop reservoir, the linking and operation of these three boreholes to Mowkop and the linking of the caravan park borehole (in Louis Trichardt) to Mowkop.
