eThekwini Municipality's innovative plumbing strategy aims to tackle water leaks

Due to illegal activities that emanated from the deployment of ward-based plumbers, the eThekwini Municipality has changed its approach with the introduction of a complaints inspector.

The municipality did not provide details on the illegal activities when the eThekwini Water and Sanitation (EWS) Unit presented its state of water supply at the Executive Committee meeting on Tuesday.

Acting Executive Director for Technical Services, Ednick Msweli, explained that instead of ward-based plumbers, the city is deploying non-revenue water plumbers.

He said that these plumbers are assigned to reservoir zones with high leakage; they work in conjunction with complaints inspectors who verify the legitimacy of faults before deploying the plumbers.

Msweli said the second approach is in areas where councillors have complained of numerous leaks.

The process is repeated where a complaints inspector is the first on site to verify and code these jobs to avoid wasteful expenditure, where plumbers are assigned to an area but are not productive.

The EWS also highlighted its plan for the insourcing of plumbers. Thus far, four water operation artisan plumbers have commenced duty on August 1, 2025.

Msweli said 44 plumbers are being recruited, with a practical assessment of artisan plumbers.

The recruitment process for insourced plumbers is estimated to be completed by the end of November 2025. It was reported that the overall statistics of water leaks and pipe bursts have reduced from over 9,000 in June 2025 to below 979 currently.

Councillor Mdu Nkosi, the chairperson of the municipality's Trading Services Committee, said water supply to most areas was stable, but there are challenges in some areas, which the municipality is addressing.

“A meeting was held with the city fleet mechanical workshop to ensure that all water tankers are available. The push to reduce non-revenue water is bearing fruit with the reduction in numbers,” he said.

Msweli said the EWS is busy with investigations to recommission the old Western Aqueduct link to supply Georgedale and Cato Ridge reservoir, which will assist in doing away with water rationing due to risks on infrastructure.

Nkosi said the commissioning of the western and southern aqueduct will boost the water supply.

He stated that he was happy with the pace at which EWS is working to ensure that reservoirs are being serviced adequately due to the deployment of plumbers to reservoir zones with high water loss.

“The new strategy of plumbers will ensure a faster response to leaks. Six months ago, we were struggling. Now that the situation is turning around, and we will closely monitor the processes,” Nkosi said.

Yogis Govender, DA councillor and Exco member, said she was disappointed with a report that the use of ward-based plumbers was abused.

“I am not certain what is declared to constitute abuse, as proportional representative councillors were also dependent on ward councillors to report faults. Whether perhaps this approach was also regarded as an abuse. It was enquired then whether consequence management has been implemented to hold plumbers concerned accountable,” Govender queried.

She was also concerned about the alleged lack of payments for hired water tankers.

Govender has requested a report to understand how much is being owed and whether there is a contingency plan to address the matter.

“Once again, there are reports of hired water tankers having discontinued service due to non-payment by the municipality,” she said.

Asad Gaffar, chairperson of eThekwini Ratepayers Protest Movement (ERPM), said the outsourcing of plumbing services was not sustainable, and they had raised these issues with the municipality. 

Gaffar said ERPM concerns were:  

1. Contract plumbers have manipulated the system to get extra work. 
2. Often, a job card will be opened multiple times for the same work. The repair would not last a day and would burst again. 
3. Some of the plumbers do not hold the proper qualifications. 
4. These plumbers are not familiar with a process called hammering after completing a repair, resulting in the line breaking again. 
5. If there were no jobs available, there were instances where pressure in the lines was allegedly increased to cause a deliberate failure.

zainul.dawood@inl.co.za