Durban - The city has closed its 29 municipal pools.
City spokesman Msawakhe Mayisela said this was because of a nation-wide shortage of chemical supplies.
“The factory that produces the chemicals was looted during the civil unrest, and as a result, it is battling to meet the high demand,” he said.
This explanation came as some surprise to most people in the pool and chemicals game who spoke to the Independent on Saturday.
Mike Johnson, a director at Durban Speciality Chemicals, said he was not aware of any crisis on a national scale but had learned, through being a swimmer, that there was “no money, no chlorine” at both the Kings Park and Durban North pools.
Pool service companies too said they were not aware of any shortage.
“There’s no such thing,” said Jason Govender of The Pool Shed.
Adrian Pretorius of The Pool Team said: “We are not currently experiencing challenges with our chemical supply chain, however, we cannot comment for other parties.”
Among those who did not wish to be named, one chemical company spoke of a “three-week wait” for swimming pool chemicals recently, while another said there had been a temporary shortage of pool acid after last year’s lockdown and riots but it was “all sorted out now”.
The city said that, for the time being, it had a memorandum of understanding in place with the Department of Water and Sanitation to use its chlorine supply.
“We also want to point out that we followed all the processes for a new contract to supply us with chlorine. However, once it was finalised, the unsuccessful bidder took the city to court,” said spokesman Mayisela.
“We apologise for any inconvenience.”
This week, the DA called on eThekwini Municipality’s head of Parks, Recreation and Culture Department, Simphiwe Ndlovu, to “urgently procure much-needed swimming pool cleansing chemicals”.
“Twenty-nine swimming pools in the city remain closed due to a shortage of these chemicals, during a time where we are fast approaching the holiday season.”
Councillors Nicole Bollman and Gavin Hegter said this was not the first time that residents had been denied the use of these facilities because of the same issue.
“It is believed that the current shortage of chemicals is because of an administrative issue within the Supply Chain Management Department and the newly implemented Supplier Self Service (SSS) procurement processes.
“Although the DA supports procurement processes to ensure that rampant corruption is eliminated, we are also concerned with how this process is being administered that (it) has caused unnecessary, critical delays.”
They said the city should not be in a situation where essential products were unavailable because they could not find a “preferred” supplier.
“We need to be focusing on the best supplier with little to no inconvenience to our residents.”
Last month a full council sitting heard that the turnaround strategy for eThekwini Municipality’s pools section needed millions of rand to continue operations, following a visit of the city’s leadership to the central coastal pools.
The iconic Rachel Finlayson pool on the beachfront has been closed since 2015 due to poor construction work by contractors who failed to repair the pool to the standard required for safe public use.
The city is considering replacing the pool’s main drain valve and reline sump, repair the rim-flow drainage channel, reconstruct the scum channel, and mend the drainage channels. The plan was also to repair the pool’s stainless steel ladders and re-examine its launder and suction lines.
The Independent on Saturday