A Manenberg mother is pleading for help after the City of Cape Town officials “left her family to sleep in poo water” for two weeks as they failed to fix broken pipes.
Dawn Newman, 45, says she is at her wits’ end living in her ground floor flat in Nellie Court, which floods each day with raw sewage from her neighbours’ homes.
The frustrated mother says they are forced to sleep with open windows and doors on icy winter nights just so they can breathe.
She says: “The problem started two weeks ago when the k*k water started coming out of our toilet.”
“I thought it was just blocked and so we drained and cleaned it up, but then it started again.
“I went to the rent office and told them what is happening and they said they would lodge the complaint for me.”
Dawn says on 31 July, she returned to the rent office as no officials came to attend to the problem and was given paperwork to confirm the complaint had been lodged.
“They gave me this page with the reference number, but nothing came from it,” she says.
“Every day the water pushes up because there is something wrong with the pipes in the court.
“We get the k*k water from six flats so whenever they flush then the k*k comes here to my house,” the angry woman says.
When the Daily Voice visited the Newman home on Wednesday morning, her children and grandchildren were struggling to breathe and shivering from the cold while sitting in the lounge.
The floor was covered with wet blankets in a futile attempt to soak up the filthy water.
“The water comes straight from the toilet to the lounge and into the rooms,” says Dawn.
“Now it’s even in the kitchen and we must rather make fire in the backyard to cook outside.
“The children are naar and sick everyday.
“My grandson, Luciano, is only two years old and he suffers from stomach cramps and it’s the k*k water causing this.
“The City thinks nothing of us living like dogs, but we pay our rent on time every month.”
City spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo confirms the matter was reported and says the municipality is experiencing severe repair backlogs, primarily due to the impact of the Covid-19 crisis and lockdown regulations.
“This complaint has been escalated,” he says.
“The City is aware of this type of problem which tends to happen when the sewer system has been misused by the dumping of inappropriate material into the system.
“When there are heavy rains, like we are experiencing, the stormwater entering the sewer system also fills up the sewer system, causing it to overflow.”