08 Jun 2020

Government is in the process of equipping a borehole in Struizendam to end the livestock drinking water woes.

Villagers have been drawing water using labour intensive traditional hand dug wells since 1941 to water their livestock.

Speaking in an interview recently, Kgalagadi District Principal hydrogeologist and regional manager at Department of Water and Sanitation, Mr Force Ramasuswana said that government was in the process of equipping a borehole and a water desalination plant at a strategic water point that would be easily accessible for all villagers.

He said the project, which is a regional project involving Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states of Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa was awarded in November last year.

He said the new development came about after approval of the Orange-Senqu River Commission (ORASECOM) secretariat water desalination pilot project at Rappelspan, funded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) - Global Environmental Facility (GEF) to be executed by ORASECOM in Rappelspan. He said major project was to equip borehole number BH10922 which was capable of yielding 5 000 litres per hour and install a desalination plant in Kgalagadi South.

He said that the project at Struizendam was a modification project of the ongoing Rappelspan major project. 

Mr Ramasuswana highlighted that the project was approved to do away with labour intensive traditional hand dug well which has a terminal depth of about 30-35 meters. 

This he said was an old water drawing model which presented health hazards as the wood logs were capable of causing injury to users. 

Further, he said sand was capable of blocking water flow as the well was not sufficiently covered.

Further, he said that the project was advertised internationally and was estimated to end in October 2020. However,  due to the time interruptions as a result of COVID-19, the project has been re-scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020.

The water projects he said, were at the BORAVAST cluster where they had identified hand dug wells, which would be reconstructed to be equipped with pumping machinery, reservoirs and watering troughs to enable them to effectively provide water for livestock.

He also said water from the Kgalagadi ground water basin belt had proven to be too saline for livestock thus desalination equipment shall be installed in order to improve the provision efficiencies and sustainability of underground water resource.

For his part, Kgosi  Isaac Titus of Struizendam ,  said the project which started last week was a welcome development as the villagers had been grappling with shortage of drinking water for livestock.  

Currently, the village had three functional traditional hand dug wells which they used for livestock, but they were not sustainable. He appreciated that the village had potable drinking water drawn from a water desalination plant in Vaalhoek but what lacked was water for livestock as there was no surface water.

“People have been suffering because of shortage of water. We are happy that government has acceded to our request.” Ends