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KNYSNA NEWS - Knysna communities that have been without water for two months will start receiving some relief from late Thursday, through the intervention of disaster relief organisation Gift of the Givers.

This follows a letter sent to the organisation by the municipality today, Wednesday 14 February requesting assistance.

This is the key requirement for Gift of the Givers to spring into action as they did in December, when providing over a million litres of emergency water to the communities of Knysna and Sedgefield.

Mario Ferreira, Gift of the Givers representative in the Southern Cape, said the letter from the municipality requested assistance to lessen the load, fill some reservoirs and provide emergency water to the communities of Concordia, Dam se Bos, Hornlee, Kayalethu and rural areas within the municipality.

For two months the municipality has dragged its feet to provide the letter requesting assistance from Gift of the Givers to to kick-start further emergency water relief. 

This emerged from a social media post on Tuesday 13 February by Ferreira who made the post in his personal capacity and said he hoped it would not lead to negative comments. 

He said his post was "to hopefully get in return a humanitarian response from those who are supposed to do their job". 

Ferreira said Gift of the Givers assisted Knysna during December 2023 with more than a million litres of water for two weeks to provide water to Knysna and Sedgefield communities - and was willing to extend the service. 

Gift of the Givers requested the letter from one of the directors of Knysna Municipality and this request was repeated telephoniclly on six occasions.

The good news is that by receiving the letter on Wednesday 14 February, Gift of the Givers can launch its emergency water programme almost immediately.

Ferreira said Gift of the Givers was taking immediate action on the request from the municipality and water deliveries should start late tomorrow afternoon 15 February.

The reason was that water tankers had to come from the Karoo area where they have been deployed until now distributing water because of drought conditions and load shedding which prevented some municipalities from pumping water into reservoirs.

At this stage there is no indication for how long the relief for Knysna will continue. "The situation will be considered day-by-day," said Ferreira.

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