The Giyani Water Intervention Programme, in Limpopo province’s Mopani district, is expected to be completed before the end of September 2025.

Currently 90.23% complete, the long- delayed Giyani water services project includes the construction of 325 km of bulk pipelines from the Giyani water treatment works to the service reservoirs that will supply water to 55 villages in Giyani.

Pressure testing and commissioning account for nearly 90% of the remaining works to be completed.

A Cabinet brief in early August outlined that 23 of the 24 villages under the Giyani 55 Villages Reticulation Phase 1 now have reticulation and household connections.

The first phase entails reticulation and household metered connections to 24 of the 55 villages.

Phase 2a, which involves the reticulation and metered household connections to 15 villages, will be implemented in the 2025/26 financial year, and Phase 2b, incorporating 16 villages, will be implemented in the outer year of the medium-term expenditure framework.

The upgrade of the Giyani water treatment works from 30-million litres a day to 40-million litres a day and the development of several well fields to ensure sufficient water supply to the 55 villages in Giyani is still at the planning stage and will be implemented in the third quarter of the current financial year.

This follows on previous significant interventions, including the refurbishment of the Giyani water treatment works to restore its original production capacity to 30-million litres a day, after falling to between 13-million and 17-million litres a day, was completed in June 2024.

Further, practically completed in December 2023 after becoming functional in April 2023, the Nandoni-Nsami bulk pipeline – a 40.5 km raw water pipeline from Nandoni dam in Vhembe – currently supplies the Giyani water treatment works with an average of 15-million litres of raw water a day.

The completed projects cost an estimated R6-billion, funded by the Department of Water and Sanitation.