NPOs picket in Joburg CBD, call on metro to increase budget to fix water infrastructure

JOHANNESBURG - Non-profit organisations (NPOs) are picketing in the Johannesburg CBD on Thursday morning, calling for the metro to increase its budget to fix water infrastructure.

Johannesburg is facing its worst water problems in many years due to aging infrastructure and vandalism, among other issues.

Households, businesses, and hospitals have had to contend with constant outages.

The picket is happening as councillors gather for an interim budget meeting in the Civic Boulevard building in Braamfontein.

Residents supporting WaterCAN and JoburgCAN NPOs are demanding for the councillors to take note of their calls for the city's water systems to be fixed.

In January, the NPOs delivered a petition to the metro calling for an allocation of R3 billion towards infrastructural issues.

WaterCAN manager Ferrial Adam said their calls could not be ignored.

"We ran a petition to increase Joburg Water’s budget from R1.2 billion to R3 billion. We then handed the petition over to the Speaker in late January, and we want them to table it because today they're discussing the budget in council, and they're adjusting the budget, and we're saying you need to adjust the budget and take water into account – water and sanitation infrastructure."

Adam said that they needed to table their petition while budget talks were currently happening.