Victory achieved as the Forest Hill water tower will be upgraded

The Forest Hill water tower received a much-needed budget of R1-million for the 2023/24 fiscal year and R30m for the next fiscal year at the council meeting where the City of Johannesburg tabled the budget on June 13.

Ward 56 Clr Michael Crichton and Ward 55 Clr Rashieda Landis spent seven years fighting and toiling on this issue. It has finally paid off. According to Crichton, this is a victory for them.

“Large parts of wards 55, 56, and 124 were subjected to regular, continuous, and lengthy water outages for the past seven years due to issues and a lack of supply from the water tower,” said Crichton.

“For too long, honest ratepayers were subjected to subpar service, but we achieved victory. With the increase in developments in these areas over the years, as well as the almost inevitable increase in population, there was a need to increase the capacity of the Forest Hill water tower to reduce the frequency of water outages.

“Landis and I were at the forefront of fighting for a resolution to the issue. We had continuous engagements with the top leadership of Johannesburg Water (JW). They eventually got JW to concede that the water tower did need to be upgraded when they came up with the design of what needed to be done at the tower. They only needed the city to allocate a much-needed capital budget for this.”

In light of this, Crichton said they were devastated when the draft Integrated Development Plan (IDP) budget was recently released and did not include the water tower.

“This prompted us to call on all affected residents to submit as many comments as possible about it before they finalised the budget. The result of all this was the victory achieved in the council. In the future, we will ensure this gets actioned, becomes a reality and does not stay on the budget only on paper,” said Crichton.

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