By: Zahid Jadwat

The Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality in the Eastern Cape announced on Friday that the city’s taps will run dry in a month. This brings the city’s 1.3 million inhabitants closer to a humanitarian emergency.

According to the Democratic Alliance (DA), the water shortage is due to dam restrictions, and the Metro being unable to increase the supply from available water sources.

According to the department of water and sanitation, the Kouga Dam, which is part of the Algoa Water Supply System that supplies the Nelson Mandela Bay area, is critically low at 12.9%.

According to the department of water and sanitation, the Kouga Dam, which is part of the Algoa Water Supply System that supplies the Nelson Mandela Bay area, is critically low at 12.9%, down from 13.1% last week.

Retief Odenedaal, a member of the Eastern Cape provincial legislature, blamed the crisis partly on the mismanagement of water sources: “The effects of the drought has been exacerbated by the fact that there’s been a mismanagement of water sources, especially by the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. They [are] over extracting their daily quota which was been gazetted by the Department of Water and Sanitation. As a result, they are bringing Day Zero much closer than it should be.”

According to the party, despite desperate pleas from authorities to reduce water consumption, water consumption in the metro has remained consistently high in recent months.