Wastewater training at Ethekwini Municipality

In June, World Water Academy delivered a training on wastewater treatment at Ethekwini Municipality Water And Sanitation. In total, 22 participants from Ethekwini Municipality took part in the training. Participants were highly motivated and our expert Helle van der Roest was impressed with their eagerness to learn and to share knowledge and experiences with each other.

The eThekwini Municipality Water and Sanitation Unit is responsible for the effective and efficient service delivery in terms of water provisioning and treatment of waste water. In April 2022, Durban faced days of heavy rain leading to deadly floods, which also heavily affected the existing water and sanitation infrastructure. Restoring the water and waste water infrastructure and water quality in the Municipal geographical area has been a priority of the Municipality of eThekwini ever since.

eThekwini staff is faced with damaged, malfunctioning water and wastewater infrastructure. The Municipality is still inadequately prepared in dealing with disaster events like in April 2022. Due to climate change, the energy crisis and the population growth of the municipality, the staff of eThekwini requires new skills to deal with the aftermath of the floods and to be better prepared for the future. To improve the resilience of eThekwini Municipality Water and Sanitation in the recovery and reconstruction phase, and to withstand future disaster events, it is critical to increase education and skills training of staff.

According to the eThekwini metropolitan municipality, which includes Durban, the devastating floods in April 2022 caused about 800m rand worth of damage to eight sewage treatment plants. eThekwini faces problems with respect to asset management, revenue collection, load-shedding, non-revenue water and climate change.

The quality and reliability of water and sanitation services are inadequate. While this is due, in part, to financial constraints, it has become evident that the absence of sufficiently skilled personnel to oversee and operate these services has been an important contributor to these problems.

With this short training program World Water Academy aimed to further consolidate the development of skills for eThekwini water professionals.

We look back at a successful week and hope to be back soon!