The Democratic Alliance (DA) wants an urgent stakeholder meeting called with the Northern Cape Provincial Legislature, the Departments of Labour and Roads and Public Works, and engineers to discuss the future of the floating provincial legislature building.
This comes as high underground water levels beneath the precinct continue to cause significant damage to the structure, posing a risk to the building’s structural integrity.
The legislature was shut down by the Department of Labour due to safety concerns after the basement and lifts flooded in 2016 due to seepage from the underground water source, compounded by heavy rainfall. The legislature embarked on a multi-million-rand upgrade project with additional costs incurred for the relocation of the legislature to the old BP Jones building in Kimberley, for approximately two years.
After relocating back to the precinct in 2019, refurbishments appeared minimal and incomplete.
While the legislature has since reported that the cables in the basement have been elevated, there remains a permanent presence of water in the basement, where the electrical hub of the legislature is found, including all the high voltage cabling, electrical switchgear, transformers and generators.
Last year, the Speaker, Newrene Klaaste, stated in committee that there is no doubt that the legislature will collapse into the basement within the next twenty years. Despite such an alarming revelation, the legislature continues to address the symptoms of the underlying problem and now intends drilling boreholes to pump the underground water to surface level. During yesterday’s legislature portfolio committee meetings, Klaaste confirmed that the legislature had and would continue to spend a lot of money on addressing the underground water issues, to prevent a crisis.
The DA is concerned about the safety of the legislature personnel. According to the Chief Financial officer, Mr Garth Botha, the last time that the Labour Department inspected the legislature was between 2017 and 2018.
The situation has also revived the DA’s concerns about past and future expenditure on the precinct. Over the years, millions of rands have been spent on keeping the legislature afloat, with figures of between R34 million and R39 million presented in different reports just for the 2016 structural defects project. When taking into consideration the ongoing work required year after year to address the impact of the water, the costs are much higher.
Since 2019, we have made repeated requests for reports on the precinct project, to no avail. In the Seventh Administration, the DA will no longer accept the legislature’s silence on this matter.
I have submitted a formal request to Klaaste for the urgent provision of all structural engineering, labour inspector, Geotech and expenditure reports relating to the commencement of the precinct project and the urgent scheduling of a stakeholder meeting. It is time that we openly discuss safety concerns and take a collective decision regarding the precinct’s fate.