More than R8m has been ploughed into the Mdantsane swimming pool in the current financial year, yet there is very little to show for it.
After years of promises to rebuild Mdantsane's only swimming pool, situated in NU2, the facility remains closed and in a decrepit state.
In 2019, Buffalo City municipality allocated R10m for the refurbishment, of which only R1.7m is left. But there have been no significant developments, aside from the installation of concrete slab fencing.
Yet it has come to light that even more funding will be needed.
At a public hearing in NU2 last week, BCM community services director Howard Sikweza told residents that R8.3m had been used to cover the pool's running costs.
DA councillor Geoff Walton was baffled.
“This project has been long in the making, with little progress over the years, despite promises. Money has been advanced but it's not clear what has been achieved with those funds,” Walton said.
He said the municipal services department did not have the expertise to conceptualise and manage the project.
In 2018, work on the pool stopped when BCM ran out of the R1m that had been budgeted.
When complete, the complex is supposed to boast an Olympic-size pool, a diving pool, a kiddie’s pool and a short-course pool.
Asked what the money had been spent on, BCM spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya sent DispatchLIVE before-and-after photographs of a derelict wall and the new slab concrete wall.
DispatchLIVE undertook a site visit on Tuesday. Grass grows in the empty pool and tiles are cracked. Grass has also over grown the pool sides, while a large open tarmac section is also covered in grass.
There was no contractor on site.
Ngwenya told DispatchLIVE that the next phase of the project, which would involve laying water and sewerage pipes, would require its own funding.
Listing what had been done so far, Ngwenya said BCM had removed old structures and installed fencing and undertaken earthworks.
“Other procurements that have been undertaken [so] far include the appointment of professional consulting engineers responsible for managing the project, from remedial works to refurbishment and the new upgrade from concept, designs, contract administration and the close-out of the project,” Ngwenya said.
In a Facebook video posted during the site visit last week, DA councillor Anathi Majeke, who was present at the meeting, said: “This project was embarked on in the 2014-15 financial year, with millions in taxpayers' money spent to date. In this past financial year alone, R8.3m has been spent on its upgrade.”
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