Water shortages will soon be a thing of the past for residents of Xhora in the Eastern Cape.

The Amathole District Municipality has launched its a Xhora Bulk Water Supply project which will provide water to 8 000 households.

The R700 million project will take water to more than 130 villages.

The Xhora Bulk Water Supply project brings huge relief to more than 60 000 residents of Xhora.

The project consists of an abstraction point, off channel dam, treatment works and reservoirs.

Locals can hardly wait for the project to be completed.

“We are excited but we can only be happy when we see water coming out of taps because we were happy when we saw taps being installed but nothing happened. We would be very happy if we saw water coming out of taps.”

“I worry because there’s been projects like this before, and our hopes would be raised. For example, in my ward, taps were installed but till today. Maybe they worked for just one year but as of today they are dry.”

The local municipality is thankful that the lives of its residents will be improved.

Mbhashe Municipality mayor, Samkelo Janda, says the lack of a proper water supply made life difficult for villagers.

“It has been a problem in the sense that we are living now in the world which is very cruel and this impacts negatively to the women because they have to go to the rivers, to the dams to pick up water and at the same time for health reasons it might not also be safe for our communities to drink such water because there’s a lot of pollution that is happening to our rivers. So, once we have this kind of infrastructure, it is going to give a lot of relief to our communities, it is going to bring better life to our communities.”

Some villages are inaccessible due to the difficult terrain.

This makes it difficult for water infrastructure to be installed.

Amathole District Municipality executive mayor, Anele Ntsangani, says those villages are not forgotten.

“There are infrastructural challenges that we face as a district but we are in the process of fixing that situation and as I speak now we are busy constructing some reservoirs so that we can reticulate water even to higher areas, as you can see the landscape of this area is problematic, but I can safely say very soon people will get water here.” – Fundiswa Mhlekude