The Democratic Alliance in Ekurhuleni is appalled that the ruling party have over the past two days left residents to deal with power and water outages and no information about the cause and scope of the problem. On Wednesday evening the power went out in several areas of the Metro with DA councillors receiving reports of power failures from Brakpan and Boksburg.
“Most of Brakpan and parts of Springs woke up to no water on Thursday morning but, after hours of attempts by the DA to establish the cause, officials claimed the problem was not one which the metro could control,” said a spokesperson for the DA. The cause of the power failure seems to have been a veld fire which damaged four major inlet Eskom cables; power was restored to all areas within four hours.
“At the time of writing, no official would put his or her name to a possible restoration time for the water outage. The most the DA could confirm was that the electricity supply – to the Mapleton pump station, which pumps water to reservoirs – was inexplicably non-functional,” said the spokesperson.
“ The impression, gained by the DA was that Metro officials absolved themselves of responsibility and a sense of urgency when it was established that the problem lay between Eskom and Rand Water.” The Ekurhuleni’s DA Caucus Leader, Shelley Loe, reported that one resident had been told by the call centre that the cause of the water loss was due to “naughty Brakpan resident’s stock piling water in baths”, causing the reservoirs to run dry.
An incredibly frustrated Loe said that she had spent most of yesterday (Thursday) trying to get politicians and officials out of meeting to address questions by DA Councillors. It did seem that the major problems were being experienced in Brakpan, Tsakane, Langaville, Geluksdal and Waterkrans, areas supplied by Sallies reservoir which in turn was not getting water pumped to it from the Mapleton Pump Station.
Loe said it was an absolute disgrace that neither residents nor councillors could get a straight answer when it came to serious interruptions of both power and water. She said that residents bought their services from the Ekurhuleni Metro and thus the onus was on the Metro to provide information. A well-run municipality would immediately acknowledge a problem and would ensure that a message went out to officials, councillors and the call centre. As soon as there was an update, this message would again go out to these same people, who are the front line of the Metro.
She said that in this instance the Metro had decided that because it wasn’t its fault, it shouldn’t be its problem, even if that meant leaving residents in the dark.
