Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers to help Makhanda residents water
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The Gvision representative discusses a critical situation with the customer, including drought, water shortage, and poor electrical supplies. They offer bottled water and other supplies, but warn that the water will not be available in the long term. The plant is not working properly and cannot handle demands of the customer. The Grahamstown Council is working to improve water supply in the area, but there is a challenge of finding the right approach until 2020 or 2021. The council is also working to improve water supply in rural areas and is working with the Grahamstown town to improve water management.
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More about this. Dr MTS Suleiman, who's head of gift of the givers,
a very good evening to you. Dr Suleman, and thank you so much for
speaking to us. Let's first start with your reason for going. There.
Were you invited?
Yes, a bit. So I was invited. In fact, on Friday afternoon we were,
in fact, we were involved with photo delivery in the Beaufort
west area, hainsburg and Moscow Bay in that region. And on Friday
afternoon, when people saw that message, they posted on our
Facebook page. And even on Saturday from Grahamstown, and
they called to say, we are in serious trouble. We haven't had
water for six days. 80,000 people are stranded without water. The
water plants are not working. The dam is almost empty. It's a
serious crisis here. And the call after call started coming, and
that's the first time we came to know about the problem. Grandson,
of course, we've been busy in many, many areas where drought
there's drought, both for water and for animal fodder. And so then
on Saturday, one of our office staff from Cape Town in the
evening, decided to phone the Speaker of the town council and
asked, Is it really a problem in Grand town? And he said, Yes,
whatever you have explained to you, and we explained to them.
They said, Yes, it's very true. We are in serious difficulty. We
don't know what to do. Please. Can you come? We'll accept any help,
any assistance you can bring, because our people are really
suffering. And at that point, we then took a decision to start
preparing our trucks, because there was nothing else you could
do. We can't from the dam. We can't from the reservoir. The only
thing you can do in this critical moment is to provide bottled
water. It's not a bad solution, but guiding solution from this
moment of time, immediately. And we said, Okay, we going to come.
And yesterday we started loading our trucks, our trucks as the
speaker on the way to PE now, there are six trucks coming. They
will be parking all going pea and actually in toilets. Don't come to
Graham's town. Don't stay overnight. Don't stay in the
because there's no water. So Doctor sulema, let me just cut in
there. I want to get a clear picture of which areas
specifically, are you going in there to help
down city, West End, East? You know both sides. The East one has
been affected. But you know, because the pump, the plant
enhance them, water treatment plant is not working. There's too
much of sand that came from the orange fish River Basin into the
reservoir. So the pump can't work. They had to shut the pump off, and
that pump provides
10 mega liters of water per day, which means that amount of water
is not coming to the town. The whole area is affected. And the
west area has was affected a short while ago because electrical
supply was affected through storms, and they couldn't pump.
The west side provides eight mega lit of water. Today that came in,
kick started working again. But today, with the load shedding
again, there was a problem. And the other problem is, even the
electricity is working, and even the treatment plant is working,
the work in the dam is too less, so soon they're going to be
without water in that area. So the reality is the second of them,
which is the main supply, is only 13% full, of which 10% cannot be
used because it's full of food. So they had 3% water left in the
settlers there. One water plant is not working, another water plant
that may only come on sometime later this work this week. So in
essence, it drops of water coming out, and when it works, they only
going to have half the requirements they can meet of the
town till 2020
or 2021
once the new development in this plant is done to provide 20 mega
liters a day. So they are in a serious bone. What's the official
word that you've received from the Grahamstown Council has Day Zero
arrived one day. They won't say it like that, you know. But in
essence, if you listen, if you watch the Facebook pages, you
watch the notes from the from the community itself, they're saying
because there's no water, and you see the TV pictures of the last
few days, people are waiting in long queues, and they say they go
half past two in the morning to wait in queues, and if they're
lucky, they get water. And people are staying in the street, hoping
that some truck or some water tanker or some water will be
brought because, in essence, there is water because, but it's not
receivable, so there is, in reality, they're not getting any
water, and they need serious use intervention. Now, we understand
that there was a bit of rain, but I imagine that has had no impact
on the water supply in the rivers or dams and all. So what is then,
the next plan for you as gift of the givers? Do you remain in the
area? Do in? Ship in or bring in more water? Well, we plan around.
You know instantly what I say, turn around. I don't have
strategy. What I mean is, tomorrow, our trucks were
delivered six truckloads of water. It's not going to be enough, but
the municipality has water tankers. The local people, some of
them, have arranged bottled water. That's how they've been managing,
to some extent, in the last with even eight days today, in the last
eight days, and with loading water from PE and we decided we'll
offload.
GO BACK TO BE pick up all the water and come back again. And we
do that a few times whilst we're doing that. Tomorrow, our
hydrology specialist doctor will be working grandstand. It's a
master 35 years in experience, in in in drilling. In the last eight
months, he has supervised two the drilling of 200 boreholes. For us,
will be producing 15 million liters of water a day, and he's
got almost a 90% success rate in fighting balls. So he will go to
Graham's town. He already told me, Look, there is good water in
Grahamstown, but the drillings are rock. Is very difficult. The
drilling is going to be difficult, but it can be done. So he's going
to go there. And if we find the right approach, then why is he
delivering bottled water? We can look at starting to put both grand
style in all the different areas, so people don't have to wait in
long queues for that water that come or may not, come by truck or
or bottle water. And they can have instant access to water in the
communities, the rural areas, maybe in the town itself. I can't,
I don't know yet, till we get there, till the service area. So
we'll hear from you, then. Thank you very much. Dr Imtiaz Suleimani
is the founder of gift of givers, or gift of givers, rather, let's
talk a little bit more about the water.