Water projects for Mulenzhe to start at last

The Malamulele West Regional Water Scheme is finally ready to commence efforts to resolve water shortages in the affected rural communities under the Mulenzhe Territorial Council’s jurisdiction.

The villages that will benefit from the water scheme include Dididi, Mulenzhe, Tamabaulate and Tshitomboni and Ramovha.

“Our villages are situated near the Nandoni dam, and still we used to worry for so many years that we are the communities without water in our taps. When the dam was built in 1998, we were part of the communities that were relocated. The (then) Department of Water Affairs promised to erect street taps for us before they completed the project, but they vanished in 2004 without fulfilling the promise,” Thovhele Nkhaneni Ramovha told Limpopo Mirror.

The Vhembe District Municipality (Water Services Authority) handed the project over to the contractor on Wednesday to start with the work, and Ramovha said they had high hopes that things would now start to change for the better.

The contractor for the water scheme, Mr Simon Mkhabele of Nyeleti Consulting Engineers, said the project was scheduled to start on 11 December this year and was expected to be completed by December 2021.

The executive mayor of the Vhembe District Municipality, Cllr Dowelani Nenguda, said they were hard at work to ensure that these affected rural communities would have water again. “We understand the rural communities under Mulenzhe Tribal Council were without clean water from the taps for such a long time, but we are now closing the gap to make our communities have clean water. By Wednesday (9 December) another water project for the rural villages under Mkhomi Territorial Council, which includes the villages Gumbani and Xihosa, was also handed to contractors to start with a water project, meaning that the R50 million Mulenzhe Water Project, among the other water projects, was commencing and contractors were appointed,” she said.

Date:18 December 2020

By: Silas Nduvheni

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