Municipality finally fixes old sewerage problem

The woes of the residents of house number 1216 in Tshikota, who endured an odorous stench coming from the trench of sewage flowing near their home, had finally come to an end.

The elderly Ms Sophie Ndou and her family suffered the hazardous trench of streaming sewage situated near their house while both the Makhado and Vhembe District municipalities failed to act and address the problem.

“Our children can now play outdoors freely and safely,” Ndou said. “We don’t have to worry about their safety anymore, because the safety hazard has been removed.”

Ndou said that they would also like to thank the district municipality for fixing the problematic sewerage system. “Our municipality should understand that, even when we approached the newspapers to write all those stories depicting the municipality’s failure to help us, we were not meaninglessly fighting them,” she said. “We want our municipalities to understand that we want services on our doorsteps. Why must we first suffer for more than two years before we could get our cries heard?”

Each time the Limpopo Mirror had phoned the spokesperson for Vhembe District Municipality, Mr Matodzi Ralushai, he would promise that the sewage problem would be attended to, including the open trench which the Makhado Municipality had dug from the sewerage mainline to divert the seemingly uncontrollable overflow of sewage onto the open, bushy ground. But one empty promise followed another without any helpful action being taken.

However, the media liaison officer in the district municipality, Mr Moses Shibambu, came to Limpopo Mirror’s offices and requested the journalist to accompany him to Tshikota on 3 June this year. “I want to see what is actually happening, so that the affected residents can get necessary help from the municipality’s side,” Shibambu had said.

Once at Tshikota, he took some pictures of the odorous trench from a distance. True to Shibambu’s word, the sewage problem had been fixed some six weeks ago, said Ndou. The trench had been covered up, too. “Now we believe that this problem will not be resurfacing again,” Ndou said.

Limpopo Mirror visited Tshikota over the weekend and found three children playing near the spot where the sewage trench used to be. “Ro takala ngauri makaka o bvisiwa (We are glad that the faeces has been removed),” said Caron Ndou (8). “My friend had nearly fallen into the trench of faeces when we played here. But now it’s safe for us to play here.”

News - Date: 29 August 2014

Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

Email: [email protected]