The construction of the laboratory appears to have been carried out by the now defunct De Beers Voorspoed Mine near Kroonstad under their social labour plan, which ends in 2021. De Beers Voorspoed will, as a result, hand the water testing laboratory over to the Ngwathe Local Municipality in a ceremony held at the Parys Water Treatment Plant beginning at 10:30 am. Officials from the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy will also be in attendance and form part of the handover.

OFM News previously reported that the municipality was forced to rope in Sedibeng Water to assist with infrastructure-related issues at its Parys Water Treatment Plant. The Free State town is the lesser-known casualty of the Vaal Water Crisis, with media coverage on the matter being dominated by the main culprit in the crisis - the Emfuleni Local Municipality in Gauteng. Save the Vaal’s Maureen Stewart in 2018 explained that the drinking water at Emfuleni is safe to drink because it comes from the Vaal Dam and undergoes an extensive purification process by Rand Water, while Parys on the other end bears the brunt of the pollution with it being located downstream where pollution accumulates. 

Ngwathe, which faces its own set of governance issues, has long struggled to sufficiently treat the raw water it retrieves from the Vaal River for consumption due to several problems at its water treatment plant. The result of this is the widely circulated pictures of brown water coming from domestic taps in the Free State town. Sedibeng Water was acting as the “implementing agent” responsible for overseeing the project to “fix the Trident plant” which was out of operation at the time.

Last week, the Minister of Water and Sanitation, Senzo Mchunu, has vowed to address pollution issues that are related to the Vaal River and has further requested stakeholders to join hands with government in finding a common solution to the problem.

OFM News