Tuesday, March 14, 2006

A Grubby Affair

So I was reading my daily morning dose of news and this story jumped out at me, or should I rather say wriggled into my consciousness. It’s about worms found in tap water in a local community in the North West Province of South Africa.

“The worms, which ranged from 1mm to 15mm in length, appeared in the "creamy white" water running from taps in homes on Monday morning.” Okay, if that’s not bad enough and the complaints about dismal service delivery in terms of basic sanitary health are not already justified, the authorities, in the form of the manager of the municipality, says the people who complained about them, have to live in this area and use this water for drinking water are “exaggerating”. He said “he and two other senior officers involved with water quality had received only three complaints about the worms on Monday”. What the hell is that about? Is that not bad enough?

ONLY a few wriggling, red worms, with no cause or origin found yet (not even to mention the fact that they don’t even know how harmful these worms could be) found their way into the tap water. Bloody hell, if the media hadn’t been made aware of this story it would probably never have seen the light of day because it happened in some rural area where things like this seem to be the norm. Just wait, until 15 mm long worms pop-up in some of Joburg’s more affluent neighbourhoods like Bryanston or Sandton, then we’ll see how fast they find the source of the problem.

One positive point, however, is that the department of water affairs has already stepped in to clarify the grubby matter.

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