GRAAFF-REINET NEWS - The Dr Beyers Naudé Local Municipality appointed service providers to drill more boreholes in and around town.
Corporate Governance and Traditional Affairs Disaster Management allocated R6,4 million rand to the municipality for the drilling of the boreholes and equipping of boreholes, within the whole municipal area.
That is in addition to the R30 million received during 2019. According to Edwardine Abader, newly appointed Acting Media Liaison Officer at the municipality, R8,8 million of the R30 million was assigned to six drought-relief projects since 31 December.
The funding needs to be completely spent by the end of March 2020.
The amount of boreholes to be drilled is not known, but it will add to the existing 28 boreholes, which belong to the municipality.
Abader said the process commenced on 13 January. "Service providers have been appointed to drill more boreholes. Consultants will be appointed during the week to chart the way forward. Unfortunately, the municipality cannot just appoint anyone without following supply chain procedures as well as the municipal by-laws," she said.
Dr Gideon Groenewald, chief hydrologist of Gift of the Givers, expressed his concern that Mackie's Put delivers up to one million litres of water per hour, but nobody may touch it.
On this issue, Abader said all water belongs to the state. Mackie's Put's water is only registered to be used by the municipality, but the water has been declared unfit for human consumption by the Department of Water and Sanitation, who have done extensive tests on the water.
"To treat the water to be potable, treatment such as reverse osmosis will have to be applied which is an extremely expensive operation," Abader explained.
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