Follow

Statement from the Gift of the Givers on their current assistance to our city:

“Grahamstown has been abuzz. Messages of jubilant anticipation have been pouring in conveyed to us by no less than the municipality itself and the local media. Today marks Day 9 that thousands of residents have been without water. The municipality has been remarkable in their humility, co-operation and preparations to receive the Gift of the Givers teams and supplies. The team and six trucks have arrived in Port Elizabeth in the early hours of the morning. Three trucks will load bottled water at a local bottling plant at 8am. At 11am the Gift of the Givers team will leave in convoy from Kesley Park (rugby field near Mount Road police station). Media have requested to be part of the convoy. They are most welcome. The SAPS will escort our vehicles and will be joined by the Grahamstown Road Traffic Inspectorate at some point and led to the municipality where we will be received by the mayor, municipal manager and councillors. There will be a short programme including a brief by Gift of the Givers Dr Gideon Groenewald (hydrologist, geologist, palaentologist) on the drought crisis in the Southern Hemisphere. Dr Groenewald has 35 years experience in this field and is responsible for identifying sites with 90% accuracy where Gift of the Givers have drilled 200 boreholes in an 8-month period delivering 50 million litres of water per day.

The trucks will then leave for the various areas to commence distribution as residents cannot be made to wait in this desperate situation. Twenty Gift of the Givers team members assisted by the SANDF, local government and interested parties will assist in physically handing out the water.”