Bitou water crisis Q&A online 2025-12-04 Summary

Good morning. We are live at the water discussion of the municipality. It's a question and answer session. I hope this has been a good communication with the municipality. I will use the panel. The panel has vast experience in local government. I will start with the executive mayor. The first is the leader, an activist of various topics, including water, water saving, and other aspects of life. So, Madam Mayor, you are welcome.

Mayor: Thank you. We hope we will have a good interaction with you around the situation in Veto.

Host: And then I will introduce the acting municipal manager. He is a municipal manager with vast experience in local government. He's actually our CFO, but in the current period, he's acting as our Municipal Manager. So people will hear today about Mr. Chris Murphy. He's actually our, how can I say, Mr. Comply.

Then I will go to Mr. Victor Felton, well known in our community already. He's got, him, and Mr. Oosthuizen is sitting next to him, who's our senior manager for water services. Mr. Felton is our director of engineering services. They have a combined experience of over 30 years in water services and engineering. Mr. Felton is a registered professional engineer with the Engineering Council of South Africa. And I believe that they've got the expertise and the understanding of water issues and will be able to provide insight into the topics that we will hear.

So I will move over to the Executive Mayor just to introduce the topic. Over to you, Madam Mayor.

Mayor: Thank you, Mr. Namtu. Welcome to all our residents, Bitou residents. Welcome to our first Q&A session, and today marks the beginning of a new series dedicated to transparent, open, and accountable governance. As your municipality, we believe that our residents deserve clear information, honest engagement, and the opportunity to ask questions directly to the leadership responsible for these critical services.

This platform is part of our ongoing commitment to give you a voice, to listen to your concerns, and to provide factual responses about the challenges we face and the solutions that we are putting in place. Water security affects every household, every business, and the future growth of our town. Your participation in this topic is essential.

Thank you for joining us and for engaging constructively as we work together to safeguard those water supplies and to strengthen public trust. So let's begin. Over to you, Mr. Namtu.

Host: Thank you, Madam Mayor. Just for the public's questions and advances on our social media pages, we have invited the public to come forward with questions and concerns they have around our water situation so that we can get more presentation.

We have received a number of questions from the public, and I'd like to thank our residents for taking part in the question and answer session. The panel will actually give a broad overview in response to the questions that we have received.

Also, what the question and answer session does for us as the communication section is to give us insight as to where the gaps are for communications. Basically, it also empowers us to be able, as communication, to directly address the issues that are outstanding and complicated to the public.

So I will not waste any time. The first question actually goes directly to Mr. Eddie Oosthuizen.

The question, Mr. Oosthuizen, like already: How many days of water do you need to know?

Mr. Oosthuizen: Good morning, good morning my colleagues, and to the viewers. Historical rainfall data indicates that we will end our rainfall season very soon. We are confident that we will get rain, although not floods—ample rain for the rivers to run and we can abstract.

We are confident it will be fine for the festive season going forward, so we can assure the residents with their cooperation with water-saving initiatives that we will be safe for the festive season.

Thank you.

Host: Thank you, Mr. Oosthuizen. The next question goes to the acting MM. How will the plan bypass procurement with emergency section 36 be used?

Acting MM: Good morning to the viewers.
In answering your question, Namtu, yes, the municipality will explore utilizing Regulation 36 for emergencies if there's any catastrophe that can happen within our area. And I must also note that Bitou is actually identified as a medium risk. So, we are not high risk, but we are a medium risk in terms of the water challenges that we are experiencing compared to other, you know, our neighbours.

Uh, thanks, Mr. Mapeyi. Uh, thanks for that response. It actually is, uh, inside the municipality, an important situation, especially that you highlight that we are classified as a medium-risk area.

So, the next question, again, what's the question? Why do some repairs take forever, wasting so much?

Thank you for the question. We've got a standby list. We've got teams on standby 24/7, weekends and after hours. All calls are directed to our customer care service to be logged and recorded. The teams will respond to the urgency of the matter. If there is a big pipe burst, they will first attend to the pipe burst and then attend to small leaks, but we endeavour to fix all leaks within the stipulated 8 hours. Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Mr. President. That's great to hear. And I'm sure that the residents know about our toll-free line, which is 0800-212-797.

So, we move to the next question. Here comes my favourite, Mr. Felton. With losses near to 30%, what is being done now to fix leaks and non-revenue water?

Mr. Felton: Madam Mayor, our losses about two years ago were sitting higher than that. It was 37% a year ago and reduced down to 29%. And currently, we're sitting stable at about 19%. So, our trajectory for the next couple of years looks like we're going to get it quite a bit lower than what we're statistically sitting at, at 19%. And we are managing our water resources quite well, so that's an indicative figure.

Thank you, Mr. Felton. Can I then move to the next question?

The next question is about a very, how can I say, prominent topic since we have been busy with the restrictions. It goes around the desalination plant. We want to know as the public: why is it run without an EIA? That is, the desalination plant. Why is the desalination plant run without an EIA since 2010? When will it reach full two megalitres per day capacity? That question is also again for Mr. Felton.

Thank you. So, the question is really relevant. Yes, in the past, we did not realise that we were sitting with our environmental impact assessment study that was done. It was only recently that we found out that that has not been authorised by the Department of Environmental Affairs. We realised that we needed to do the study of increasing the capacity at that desalination plant. We notified Environmental Affairs ourselves, and they said, yes, we're non- compliant. What we're currently doing is going through a 24G application process. The whole 24G background is that we admitted to us that it was something that was not done correctly in the past. Now what we do is collecting it. The local government, the Provincial Government, is

assisting us with the process; they've got in-house expertise, so together we aim to eventually finalise the matter and to get that plant up and running to full capacity.

Okay, thanks, Mr. Felton. Probably a follow-up, a short question around that is: What is the capable water production per day if the desalination plant is fully operational?

So, with the plant fully operational, we will at least be able to deliver 2 megalitres of heated water per day.

Okay, thanks.
Thanks for that insightful answer.

Yes, you may, Madam Mayor. I just want to assure the public that, as everyone knows, the desalination plant has been in operation since 2010. As Mr. Felton correctly said, we did not illegally operate the plant in a way that was deliberately done. This was only discovered when we went through certain processes to look at the capacity of the desalination plant, and we were then informed that because of the change in legislation in 2017, the new environmental requirements and new environmental laws apply currently.

And there is the thing that the legislation has changed since 2010 and 2017. New legislation is coming to effect, and as a result of that, we then discovered that we are not complying with those legislations, and we are rectifying the situation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

So, the next question will go to Mr. Eddie Oosthuizen again.

You are a popular man today, Mr. Oosthuizen. When will the Keurbooms and Roodefontein pipeline be reinstated?

Thank you for that question. As we all know, the pipeline from the Keurbooms and Roodefontein dam—that pipeline with the pump station and accompanying infrastructure—was vandalized many years ago. We've appointed a PSP, Professional Service Provider, to take an assessment. The technical report has come up with the aim of getting a costing to apply for grant funding to have that pipe reinstated. That's one of our priority projects. It might be as soon as possible.

Okay, thanks.
Thanks, Mr. Eddie Oosthuizen. Thank you so much for that response.

We are now moving to Mr. Mapeyi, Acting MM. This question is directed to you and it deals with the issue that many people are pondering about, which is: why are big developments still approved without confirmed water capacity? Will approvals of developments be paused whilst we are in this crisis—or let me say, this situation, rather?

Okay, thanks, Mr. Namtu.

Mr. Namtu, in regards to human development within the plant area, I must also mention that developments within the area stimulate the economy. They also bring some opportunities within the plant area. So, therefore, we will still continue with the developments, but we will be cognizant in terms of making certain considerations, which will set strict conditions for the developers, such as confirmation of the augmentation through the provision of boats, rainwater harvesting, and recycling initiatives. So, we will have those conditions for any developers that are developing within the area. Ultimately, we're also looking at expansions, you know, to accommodate any expansions within the area.

Okay, thank you, Mr. Mapeyi. I think you are giving us a good overview of exactly what the plan is from the municipality. And basically, you are saying we are open for business but under strict conditions, if we could summarize it in that fashion.

So... we will now go to the next question.
Mr. Felton, are you ready? I can see you are ready. Why were the restrictions implemented so late? Thanks, Nandini.

So, the restrictions are never implemented late. We put it throughout Council 2 policy. The policy follows certain conditions where we start putting all the restrictions in place at different levels. We base our restrictions on the river flow. If it's less than 300 metres per second over the weather, then we start imposing the water restrictions. So, we've been complying with these water restrictions in terms of the policy. So, it's not late in terms of what our policy requires us to do.

Okay, thanks for that response.

We then move to the next question. It's got a funny name or a funny word, but which we will definitely dissect. We are learning every day in this job.

How and when will all aquifer studies be consolidated into one urgent plan? Mr. Felton, again, can you give us that clarity?
Thanks, Anil.

So, we've already done the studies. The studies are complete. It has gone into a combined integrative plan. The plan has been submitted to council, which is for public knowledge. We are more than prepared to disseminate the plan to the public if that's required. We've already done the costing of the plan, we've identified the projects that are required, and the projects are then split up into short, medium, and long-term activities.

Thank you.
Thank you for that.
We will then move to the next question. Mr. Oosthuizen, are you ready?

Have you seen a decrease in water usage in the past week since you announced Stage 3 restrictions as a municipality, or has the increase in visitors offset any decreases that we could have had?

Thank you, Mr. Namtu.

Stage 3 water restrictions were implemented on the 17th of November.
We take daily inflow and outflow readings at our treatment facilities. At this stage, the town is busy with the rangers, but it's not over busy, so it's very difficult to say that the increase or decrease is stable or something is stable at this moment. Thank you very much.

Okay, now we move to the next question, which, Mr. Felton, you must be ready for. The Plettenberg Bay Ratepayers and Residents Association represents a large percentage of residents, and their engineers have repeatedly offered to help. That question then becomes:

why has there been almost no proper consultation or communication with them and the public until this crisis forced a live stream, which we are having today?

Mr. Felton: Uh, so I'm here. This was a little bit of a tricky question to answer because we do have a very good working relationship with the Bay Bay Association. They have got qualified professional people that sit on their association as members. Even though we have not sat as a group recently in a formal situation, we do constantly have contact with their members that have been identified to correspond with us. The members down here have got experience in infrastructure where they have actually been in a municipal environment or even in a government environment, such as the Department of Water and Sanitation, and we do that with their input to our discussions. So, yes, to put it in short, yes, we have a good working relationship with the Third Grade Wage Association, and we still do have a good working relationship with the Association. Thank you.

Also, just to put, like Mr. Felton said, obviously we want to engage with our stakeholders and maintain good working relations, and just also to put the public interest, that we do also work with our national and provincial counterparts—arts, politics, sanitation, provincial government —and we are currently also engaging with them. We are getting excellent advice about what the current situation is and also including our other stakeholders in the discussion about our short-term, our medium-term, as well as our long-term solutions. And we're getting every stakeholder involved, and thank you so much for your engagement.

Chairperson: Thank you for clarifying that. Uh, Madame Mayor, Mr. Felton, I think the Beetle Municipality pushes the envelope when it comes to stakeholder relations, uh, not only on the water issue but on other issues as well. Uh, so I want to thank you for that clarification.

Now, Mr. Mapeyi, are you ready?
Mr. Mapeyi: Yes.
Chairperson: Have you drank your water? Mr. Mapeyi: Okay.

Chairperson: Uh, is HR actively headhunting staff to fill vacancies in the water department or the water section?

Mr. Mapeyi: Okay, no, thanks, Mr. Number Two. With regards to corporate services, the recruitment and selection processes are actually being pursued, but a special forecast has been given in terms of priority to water and sanitation business union, in line with our council in motor solutions, where we're putting effort into filling any funded vacancies for me, for that section, for the section to be more effective.

Chairperson: Okay, thank you.
Mr. Number Two: Thank you, that is comprehensive.

Chairperson: Uh, Mr. Felton, this one goes to you. I've got the right to shoot today, uh, so it's over to you. Mr. Felton, is corporate services finalizing the agreement for extraction of water from Rhoda Fontaine Dam? When will this decide?

Mr. Felton: Yes, so, um, all water actually belongs to the national government, so the dams, the rivers, and that—that's their competencies. The municipality has really little involvement in water that's sitting at ground surface or underground. When it comes to allocation of water from rivers or dams, that really is done between entities and the Department of Water and Sanitation, and allocation is given as determined by the Department of Water and Sanitation nationally. So we've got an allocation out of the dam. So have farmers, and so have local communities. The allocation is a legal requirement for us; we cannot over-expect, otherwise

we also get a non-compliance, so we also got to comply. We don't need to manage the dams itself as far as the water is concerned.
We get told these are the conditions we want to expect water out of the dam. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Felton. We go again.

Will Council put a priority on budgeting for all the projects needed for water and sewerage infrastructure, including repair and maintenance? For years, the capital spent on repair budgets have been underspent. That is the question going to Mr. Mapeyi, our acting MM.

Okay, now thanks, Mr. Namtu.

Mr. Namtu: Council has always prioritized, you know, the capital and operating budget for work and sanitation for the business units, especially the project. Previously, we can confirm that, you know, the budget was—it was in excess of our 95% budget are spent by the specific business unit which is water and sanitation. Further on that, for the UNP26, financially the council has actually allocated 96% of the capital projects to service delivery projects including water and sanitation. And also, from an operational budget perspective, 73% has been allocated specifically for service where water and sanitation are included in that service to the environment. So it actually covers the work, I mean the repair and maintenance that we are constantly, you know, doing within the town in line with our repair and maintenance plan.

That is impressive, Mr. Mapeyi. Madam Mayor, you look as if you want to say something.

Look, we can always improve, but I want to assure the public that water incineration is a top priority in terms of our budgeting. We have also allocated in this year's budget some funding for consultancy fees, to do assessments and costings for us to get an idea about exactly how much it's going to cost us, especially in terms of our long-term plans. So we do have a plan in place, and we really want to, especially in terms of long-term water security, we are moving into the direction as a council that it is our top priority.

Thank you.
That's impressive. We will then move to the next question.

Mr. West: Is the municipality flagging system in place to prevent the purchase and delivery of municipal water by tanker or fire trucks to people who have existing municipal water connection and monthly water accounts?

Thank you for that question. It's a very interesting question. Our work works with a tariff—in writing a tariff structure for collection of water at our fire apartments. What happens, people need to pay a finance tax slip to the fire apartment and collect the volume of water which is paid for. But this system is currently being used with misuse. People collect water for other uses system. So this is a very good question. We'll put systems in place, procedures in place to curb people misusing the system.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Oosthuizen. I think I earlier said that the reason for this question and answer session is also to showcase our weaknesses so that we can work on them. So that is a good response, Mr. Oosthuizen.

We will then go: Is there a controlled point at the sewage treatment plant at the Diep River Piesang, and Clean Piesang, as well as the Bitou River sources for commercial roadworks and construction industries to pump water for the purpose of wetting down sites or roads?

Mr. Felton: I think it's water treatment works. Yes, there is a control system put in place where we monitor the water that we do drink and we monitor the water that does get released— that's volumetric. However, as I said in the beginning, the rivers and the dams aren't under

our control. It's under the control of the Department of Water and Sanitation. So they do the monitoring in their own way.

Okay. Thank you, Mr. Felton.

The next question basically says, first of all, they thank us for having the question and answer session because they say, finally we've got somewhere we can say something. So I like this question: Do you have a plan as a municipality for the future? If so, kindly share the plan with the residents. And this one goes to the executive mayor, Mrs. Jessica.

Come, come, our water resources properly. We need to have medium-term plans in place. And, of course, we need to make sure that our long-term planning addresses the issues.
We definitely have a plan. Like I said, short-term, medium-term, and long-term, and we will definitely share those plans with the public. But also, to say that we are all responsible for managing and consumption of our water resources, and we must please remember that water is a very scarce and a very valuable commodity, and we need to use it responsibly.

Thank you, Madam Mayor. And I think there's also our website to get some of these documents which highlight our plans, IDPs, and all of that.

Sorry to interrupt, and also when we do our capital budget and when we do our operational budget.

Thank you. Thank you a lot, Madam Mayor.

Now, the next question, I think, Mr. Felton or is it Mr. Oosthuizen? You'll choose. This one is a toss-up between the two of you. I don't know.

Okay. The car wash businesses are operating as normal, yet the mobile ones are restricted, shouted at by people in the streets. Car washers can operate, but—oh yeah, so basically what this one says is that there are car washers that are operating whilst the mobile ones are not allowed to operate. Can you give us a response to that?

Yes, so we do allow our business to operate even though we are under strict dry conditions and we've imposed several restrictions. But, however, that comes with strict requirements. And if a car wash business says we need to use water to operate our business, then what we say is, well, give us proof that you can recycle at least 80% of your water. And if there's any other measures in place that we can... we can reduce our water consumption.

So what we do is we look at every car wash individually. However, I'm quite happy because we don't have staff to actually monitor this. When residents phone in and the public phone in and they say, "Yeah, this is a car wash that's running, do you know about it?" At least then we are warned, we notify, and then we send out our enforcement to do an investigation.

Thank you, Mr. Felton, and that's a good answer.

Okay, we move now to the next one, and I think it's the last question before I hand over to the Executive Mayor to do the closing remarks. So this one says the provincial administration camp in Marine Drive, there the employees are washing private cars on a daily basis without any restrictions and so forth. So I'm handing it over.

Thank you for notifying us regarding this. We will investigate and we will issue the relevant notices of non-compliance, and if they use more water, less punitive tariffs if they go over the allocation. We are both under legal restrictions.

Okay. Thank you.

That brings us to an end of the question and answer session, but I will then hand over to our Executive Mayor to have the closing remarks.

Thank you for logging in. Over to you, Madam Mayor.

Thank you, Mr. Namtu. Before I do my closing remarks, I think there has been a lot of concern regarding information codes and signage—that we must put those up as strategic public spaces to inform visitors and to inform residents of the water shortage, and also obviously inform the public and educate the public regarding water-saving tips.

Let me start by saying that in the last month we have been doing a specially stable engagement. We have also had awareness campaigns within communities. We have looked in our highest consumption list and identified those customers for us to tailor our message.

So, Mr. Namtu, I think you have got good news for us in terms of our signage and our billboards. Can you please inform the public what is the latest?

The latest, Madam, the signage is arriving today at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock we hope to put up the banner, which will be covered by SABC. And then we also have our normal campaigns that we continue in terms of flyer distribution. We also want to thank the tourism board and tourism association; they have actually played a critical role in assisting to ensure that those communications around water-saving tips are up in our guest houses. Also, their publications are covering a lot in terms of what we are doing. We are in partnership, and for that, we want to thank all the stakeholders that...
Play a role in making sure that this message gets across over to you again. Engage with local, district community newspapers, radio stations to run Waterwise information, and we can give the politics in our campaigning.

Now, I'm going to give over to communications as well because I know this is something that is very close to your heart.

Thank you so much, Madam Mayor. We've started with our comms plan about a month and a half ago with our social media at first. And then now we were doing our costing to see if we can go on. I'm not sure if I can mention the radio stations. We saw that there would be about 4,000 rand to run 30 seconds, et cetera. But we are in the process of doing that. We've purchased also promotional items. It's in the ACM process so that our traffic cops also are standing on the road in our markets and in our centres.

And also, we've partnered with our libraries to also educate the youngsters. They have been running our recycling as well as our water-saving campaigns. In our communities, we did do a campaign with the Department of Water and Sanitation where we did hand out flyers and also we did put up lots of posters on our public spaces that we have.

In terms of also social media, B2 also uses a lot of WhatsApp, and we have a WhatsApp channel which is updated frequently with our water-saving tips and also where we are in terms of our restrictions. We're also on our Facebook, and also what we've realized is that word of mouth also plays a big role in spreading the message that we will have water but we need to manage our water sources well.

And so, we have embarked on that campaign, and as Mr. Namtu announced, the SABC will be here today, and we are confident that our message will go far. Also, the people that are visiting our town, our tourists, will also know that we are a water-scarce area, as are our neighbours, Knysna, George, Port Elizabeth on the other side, that when they come here, they mustn't misuse our resources.

And also, our tariffs that we have in place are punitive for people who are high users. So, I see a lot on our social media that people are using sprinklers. We encourage that they call customer care and they report it so our law enforcement can also issue notices and also can deal with that. So, we are well on our way on our campaign to ensure that we make it through the season and next year we will be good.

Thank you so much, Nazim.

So then, I will move over. There was also, you know, suggestions—suggestion that we publish weekly updates on our DARE medals, our workflow consumption losses, and projects. I think with the projects, as previously stated, you know, there's different—there's a medium term, there's a long term. Those are normally reflected in our operational budgets and in our capital budgets.

And if there's anything like this, the acting MMS, if any emergency situation arises, then we do also, in terms of legislation, need to follow certain processes. Local government is quite regulated, and I know it is very frustrating, especially from a public perspective, that people do feel our processes are a bit slow, but also just want to say that, you know, we are very regulated.

But Mr. Felton, I know Roodefontein Dam is basically also like a Plan B. I mean, it's a storage. The Keurbooms river, the flow, has been, you know, very concerning. But can you also update us what has happened there? Have you applied for a waiver? Can we publish our weekly updates and so forth?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.
I think, indeed, Dr. Messonnier can be no more than welcome to step in.

So yes, your question about can we publish updated information on our flows in our rivers and also the dam levels—we have a nice, definitely, because we monitor daily actually. So to publish it in our previous media, social media platforms at GDC is a nice definitely.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the losses, we only can determine the losses at the end of the month—that is when the billing runs that gets done. But that can be, that can also be published. We have no issue with that.
But it may have got the extraction out of the root of the container. We have had various communications with the Department of Water and Sanitation, requesting that they relax the restriction of extraction at the dam. They've come back to us verbally, which we're waiting for in writing, by the way, to say yes, they will allow us to extract more than what our education allows, which is a good thing for us as residents in Bitter, the municipality of the Bitter area.

And then the other thing that really governs extraction and also governs level water restriction in terms of policies—and here comes the river itself—it was mentioned that previously we could only extract out of the dam, and out of restriction it has to be over 200 metres per second. However, now what's happened is we've been told that we can actually drop that to a lower level. We've still got to get a written notification with that. So, yes, we've been given some leeway, but it's quite well-ordered satisfaction. Environmental fees and provinces have helped us with this whole process, and it actually gives us more freedom of movement. Our concerns should be allayed by the fact that we can't give it these concessions.

Thank you, Ma'am.
Thank you. And then people want to know what was in the comment you made.

Yes, Maya, thank you. The use restrictions up to 115 litres a second is only consented to until the end of February to help us over the festive season, and it is a reduced restriction. When we have about 300 litres a second, we are allowed to pump 160 litres a second below, but at 300 up to 1 foot, we are allowed to abstract 80 litres a second. So, that's also, you know, why it's important for the public to understand that the water restrictions—yes, it might be punitive in terms of our tariffs, and it's also a preventative measure. So when we do not run into a situation, then we become a high risk, and residents wake up one morning and the jobs are dry.

But, with that being said, you know, there's also the concern: what happens if the supply, the kerosene supply, collapses? I mean, because I know some people view it with the restriction of extraction, but what will happen if the kerosene supply collapses? Will we have tankers? Will we have collection points? Will we further our restrictions? What's your comment on that?

Thank you, Nene. So, we've got three other main schemes that we rely on; we've also got extraction pumps. So, at the moment, we've obviously got the desalination plant, we have the walls that are currently in place, but more importantly, we must realise we extract about 80% of our total supply out of the Keurbooms river. If that's not possible, then we become reliant on a vertical tank dam to extract water out of there. So, there are options for this municipality to consider should we shoot the Kiapung River in a non-expectation way.

Correct. And also, to add on to that part of the plans that we are putting in place—and in actual fact, next year it will be a priority for us to look into clearing our catchment areas, clearing of beta, ion vegetation, and so forth—and hopefully with that, we can manage our catchment area, get a long-term plan or strategy in place for us to manage our catchment area so that the Keurbooms system, actually, you know, we don't run the risk of the system collapsing.

So, you know, another interesting comment is to say: is a single person responsible for water security? And this person wanted the name, the role, and the contact number of this person.

So, I would assume referring to the municipality, Mr. Felton is our HOD, which is the Head of Department. He is directly responsible for managing the department, and Mr. Oosthuizen is the section manager. Is that correct, Eddie?

So, in terms of the municipality's processes, the director reports to the acting MM, and the acting MM reports to myself, who is the executive mayor, and then he has the responsibility to report to Mr. Felton.

Mr. Felton, so I'm not sure if you are the person who knows him here, but what I would like to say is that it is a collective responsibility.
From the municipality side, we must collectively take responsibility for the situation, but also, you know, the public must assist us with this and also take collective responsibility by becoming water wise, water smart. I think that's the short answer to that one. How is 5.0F? And then also, a bit controversial, you know, people are saying that we've avoided residents. We have avoided the Red Players Association, the engineers, until we were forced to do a live stream. And, you know, now people want to know how often will we actually give them updates, you know, because we are doing this now. Is this a once-off, or are we really willing to engage with the public? How many questions did we get?

I think, first, what we did was through the IDP process. In every IDP, there's been someone from communications to come and explain the water or ask Mr. Henge, who is the IDP manager, to speak on the water restrictions and also speak on water saving. And it's been an ongoing process that if we have gone through the IDP process, it means that we've gone through all the wards. So all the wards have been engaged in this process. And as mentioned, we did go through DWS, where we did do physical handing out of pamphlets to people in our public spaces as well. And we've also gone through our libraries, where we've educated people when we were still even on level two water restrictions. And now, when we've upped to level three, it was only a matter of altering what we had on our posters for them to continue with this.

The question and answer session: people were given time to send in questions to Bitou, and we received an excess of about 90 to 100 questions from about 30 residents. We extended the time in order for residents to get time to engage the municipality. And that exercise has allowed us to gauge, in terms of communication, what we actually need to focus on because that is what the public is not clear about. And what we understand is that we must speak more unto our desalination, and we must make the public understand that the desalination is not manna from heaven. We only have a limited water from there, and it's used to supplement our

water supply. And if every household continues to use water-saving tips as we've been putting out on our social media and as we've been handing out the flyers to individual people, we will make it through the season and we should be fine.

So COMMS has done its planning, and we have been engaging residents in all different aspects. We've gone physically. And if needs be, the municipality is open to engaging. If we have a water meeting outside of the usual IDP and report back meetings, then it's something that the municipality can consider. We're not closed off to the public.

Yes, I'd just like to add the fact that the question and answer session itself came from the fact that on social media, which is our social media platform, obviously there we saw that there's a lot of questions, people asking questions and whatever, so we felt, let's formalize it. It gave us the idea of the question and answer session. So engagement, or stakeholder engagement, is basically also through the platforms that we have. Word of mouth—we get certain things from people on the streets that say that you haven't done a PCT, and then we raise those issues or escalate those issues to people like the director of engineering services, the acting MM. So true that constant engagement on our platforms actually encourages us to actually make sure that we do reach out more and fill the gaps in terms of what people's understanding is in terms of that. So it's an ongoing process. So we might, again at a certain point in time, have another session like this. We were trying by all means to actually make sure that the public is engaged in terms of the water restrictions. And obviously, as I earlier said, we've got our toll-free line, which is the customer care line, where we, because on a monthly basis, we are able to gauge in terms of what are the issues that are...

Reported by consumers in terms of the customer care platform that we have, and that also gets escalated to councillors in terms of the portfolio committees, which then enable, if for instance we notice certain trends, the engineering services department is able to then tailor- make, like, let's say, for instance, there's issues that they pick up that speaks about the infrastructure. They are able then to come up with a plan in terms of infrastructure development or infrastructure upgrading and all of that.

So basically, we've got various platforms that we are actually using to encourage that public dialogue between us and the public. Thank you.

Correct. I mean, we can always improve. We are not saying that we are perfect. I mean, we basically need to identify the gaps and improve on that. But also to say it's a multifaceted approach, you know, because we do get our ward councillors engaging with communities, having public meetings, and I also want to encourage the public to attend those public meetings. We've had door-to-doors, and in the meantime, while we were mitigating some of the risks, we were busy working on medium-term and low-term strategies. So we wanted to be responsible and engage the public when we've got solid feedback. We don't want to come to the public and give you wishy-washy information. So we are not avoiding the public, we are not avoiding residents; we are here to engage, we are here to improve. And lo and behold, we will start to use, especially—I think there's a cry out on social media, especially in terms of our social media campaign—we will strengthen our approach, and thank you for the public for making us aware that we need to engage with you and you are to hear from us.

So, you know, it's the range holiday season, and people are also asking in terms of our demand. And I think besides range, you know, obviously the range has got a huge impact on our economy, but people want to know—let me rephrase and ask—during peak season, I mean, how does that affect our demand? And then obviously the issue of the desalination plant and the road up to the dam that we use to supplement the demand. How does our demand get affected by the holiday season, and what plans do we have in place?

Thank you, Madam Mayor.

Our average consumption during the year hovers around between 11 and 230 megalitres a day. It goes up to 15 to 18 in the festive period, December, January. We do peak; last year, December 27th, we peaked at 21 megalitres a day, which is quite high. But yeah, so we put the data, we manage it.

Thank you.

So you've heard it, we've peaked at 21 megalitres a day. Reminded you as the public, we don't want that situation. We are actually using, for our water restrictions, to prevent that reaction too much. So you want to get on today.

Thanks, man. I just wanted to amplify what David said. Now remember, within the season, it's actually a season, you know, there's a difference because we now want water restrictions, you know, based on our public—you know, you know, where we've alerted all the—I mean, all the residents working together with the tourism—you know, there is a minus on AB. So, you know, it stems from the fact that, you know, people will now use water sparingly, you know, during the peak season. So we might not expect a high peak as perceived because now people will be using water differently during the season.

Yes, we definitely encourage responsible use of water. You know, there's this controversial topic: people are saying that we've built a desalination plant. We have never used a desalination plant.

Now, I need to speak to that elephant in this room, Mr. Felton. Before I comment on that, anything you would like to say on that?

It's been a matter of perception that our desalination plant is quite a bit operational. So we run it daily just to make sure that the mechanical and electrical parts of the desalination plant are working. If we are to get that plant up and running and start feeding our suppliers...
As a supplier, we can do it within 24 hours. Funny enough, maybe on this side we should communicate a little bit better because students from Providence side, when we took them on the tour, they were really impressed with our plant. They actually said this is one of the better desalination plants that they've seen along our coastline.

So, yes, we must actually then start communicating with the public, showing what our desalination plant is about and that it is fully functional, that it is not defunct, that it is in good working condition as it stands now. But we have mentioned that it's only to augment our supply that we get from the Keurbooms River and our water fountain.

And the reason why we should only use it at peak times is because the cost of delivering that water to the public is at least peak times more than what it costs us to treat water from our wells, our dams, and also our rivers. So, we try to keep it down to an absolute minimum and only during peak season and when we need it because it's very expensive to run.

So then, we will be using the desalination plant and we are resolving all the legislative requirements in that regard. We are collaborating with the provincial government, water, sanitation, environmental affairs for us to be responsible and to resolve the issues in our legislation.

Now, I can see communications teams—they are very impressed with me this morning because I think we have to realise that I can actually become the communication team. But yeah, so look, this was quite a lovely engagement, and I do think, like we said, this will not be the last.

And also, just to say to the public and to the residents, and of course, for those all over South Africa because maybe we've got people on our Facebook page that are not in Breton and Payne at the moment: We are open for business. Our town is open for business.

I also want to, especially when it comes to the desalination plant, say I am so impressed with our engineering department and our staff. They are taking good care of our infrastructure, and kudos to Team Beto. Thank you so much for your hard work.

And then just to remind the public that our water restrictions are for operational requirements; it's a preventative measure. We are currently at medium risk, so we need your assistance. We

need your help as the public for us to control our demand, you know, and use our water resources for what is needed.

Mr. Felton, can you just remind the public what are the standards currently under Level 3?

Yes, luckily the conditions that are put under Level 3, Level 1, 2, and 3 are really basic conditions, and everyone in the public can adhere to them, such as using hose bars, finding ways and means of reducing or avoiding wasting your water.

So, yes, we don't want to see people still using their sprinkler system—in fact, even worse if it's on automatic control—because those things even get used when it's raining. So we've got to, as citizens, and myself included, be responsible around the usage of our water.

I just want to say that the levies or the so-called imposition of increasing the tariffs is not meant to be there as a punitive action. Although we do apply it as a punitive action, as a municipality we'd rather you actually look at saving and not wasting the water.

And if we had that approach, then for the future—and I'm talking not just this period but also for years to come, even when I retire from the municipality—we as residents have got to protect our natural resources. Water is one of those resources which we should put higher on our priority because our population is just growing, growing, growing.

And allocating resources like we did in the past, like building massive dams, has almost come to a stop now. So my message, if you're asking for a message, is just for us residents to cut waste.

Yes, and if we are worried about our gardens or for green water, reuse the water when you do your dishes or maybe when you take a shower. I saw that when I went to Cape Town those days.
When there was always a bucket in the shower, you know, so there's alternative ways that people can explore, especially when it comes to gardening and so forth. But to end off, we need you, we need your assistance as a public, and remember that you can report leakages to 0800 212 797.

18MM: Over to you. Anything you would like to add?

No, thanks Madam Mayor. I also want to thank the viewers for allowing us the opportunity to engage. I think this is one of the things that we put as a priority to the municipality—to engage our communities. I think, premising it from the municipal systems and other legislation, we as a municipality are compelled to involve the public in terms of the affairs of the municipality. So this is the right platform for us to have such engagements.

And I think, as we have said, we value our residents, we value our ratepayers, we take them very seriously, and we always engage, we listen to their advice. Also, we do follow our own protocols in terms of the three spheres of government. Because if we were to, you know, have some assistance that we require, you know, the first protocol is for us to source it from our three states of government—but not, you know, neglecting the advice that we are getting from the experts who are also part of our residents.

Very important point. So, in terms of our protocol, we need to consult the provincial government, we need to consult our national counterparts, and of course, the 18 and just 18 men—that we do value you, your staff, who do value our other stakeholders.

And thank you so much for joining us, and have a wonderful Christmas season, and use water responsibly.