Much the same as any other town\u2019s cluster-offices, the difference being, they have no water.<\/p>\n
The Belfast cluster command have had to welcome the community, and top brass to their offices at 3 Rissik Street, for twenty weeks, without a drop of water available. Their frustration has now rippled to the rest of Belfast who’ve been without water since Monday.<\/p>\n
At its poles the situation is so frustrating that at the serious end, toilets cannot be flushed posing a health risk, and at the trivial end, officers have to endure their days without coffee, because cups cannot be rinsed.<\/p>\n
For the rest of Belfast, its much more serious because no provision for tankers have been made, leaving residents without any water to cook.<\/p>\n
The cluster-office serves as the area-office for the four surrounding police stations, Dullstroom, Machadodorp, Laersdrift and Roossenekal.<\/p>\n
Dry taps have been reported by almost everyone in the office, countless times, and promises of Jo-Jo tanks filled by the municipality to alleviate the situation, have not been adhered to.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve even brought stink under the attention of the health inspector, to no avail,\u201d an irate member described the bathroom situation.<\/p>\n
Members complain that every complaint is treated as new since the municipality has no complaint logging system, leading to confusion among municipal staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cEach passes the buck to the other, and no clear answers are forthcoming,\u201d another member complained.<\/p>\n
The DA\u2019s water and electricity portfolio member, Mr John Stevens, says that the cluster cops have it wrong, they\u2019ve actually been without water for more than 20 weeks running.<\/p>\n
According to him, the cluster-offices and entire Extension 3, has had to make do with dry taps because of the high rise water tank servicing the area, being defunct.<\/p>\n
He says a second tank was fixed recently, servicing neighbouring extensions, and that the municipality is well aware of the large areas still affected by the drought.<\/p>\n
\u201cTenders have been advertised, calling for contractors who can install new high rise tanks for the affected area,\u201d Mr Stevens said.<\/p>\n
He could however not say, by when the problem would be solved.<\/p>\n
Trying to get hold of any municipal official is impossible, the phone rings a few times before a monotone computer generated voice declares – \u201cNo one is answering,\u201d where after the line goes cold.<\/p>\n
\u2022According to an sms sent out, this weeks drought was caused by faulty pumps, and according to the municipality, the situation would be rectified by today.<\/p>\n
Before going to print, Belfast was still experiencing what the SAPS cluster officers have been experiencing the past five months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The SAPS Cluster-offices in Belfast, hosts daily meetings and anti-crime plenary sessions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1848,"featured_media":21816,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Gerhard Rheeder","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news-headlines"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1848"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}