VEJA continues with campaign of monitoring the RietSpruit River

Community Alerts/Mduduzi Tshabalala/Vaal-VEJA/17 February 2017

VEJA Water Quality Team is continuing its campaign of monitoring the RietSpruit River and together with the community of Evaton, Traditional Healers and Religious Groups, there will be water quality capacity workshops on water legislations, water quality testing and monitoring training to be happening soon.

By far since VEJA Water Quality Team has been participating in the RietSpruit Catchment Management Forum (CMF) and other CMF’s , the lack of progress to see Forums transform the participation by bringing in Traditional Healers and Spiritual Water Users as recognised water users, the lack of holding polluters accountable for every quarterly seating we learn of continuous exceedences, while the Department of Water and Sanitation won’t hold nobody accountable.  On the 7th February ’17 the first 2017 RietSpruit Catchment Management Forum meeting sat and a presentation was made by Gauteng Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, about the state of the RietSpruit river, further in their report it is recommended that users are warned not to be using the river either for domestic and aquatic sports use, and that the river is heavily polluted.

VEJA is advocating with concerns of impacted users who are excluded from the processes of water governance.