Ward 106 councillor Chris Santana says the growing frustration over Douglasdale’s water crisis, coupled with what he described as silence from Johannesburg Water (JW), forced him to call a public meeting to get answers directly from the utility.

The meeting brought JW officials face-to-face with residents who have endured months of recurring bursts and unreliable water supply. Santana said the situation has become increasingly difficult, with residents sometimes seeing repairs completed at night only for another failure to occur hours later. “The reason I called the meeting was because almost every day we’ve got no water in Douglasdale.” He said residents had reached a point where they were no longer simply reporting individual bursts, but were dealing with a continuous cycle of outages.

Read more: Johannesburg Water faces angry Douglasdale residents over water crisis

Santana said he had attempted to engage JW through official channels, but struggled to get responses. “I eventually reached out to the managing director to say, ‘I need a public meeting’, because none of them were responding to my emails.”

He said he also approached the city manager, because he believed residents deserved direct answers from the entity responsible for supplying their water. “These are your customers. You need to respond. I can’t respond on your behalf anymore. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

Santana said he had been aware of a possible backflow issue that could be contributing to pressure problems and repeated bursts and had been seeking clarity on what mitigation measures were being implemented. “The team are on the ground, so I’m grateful to JW that they are. They do it before all their service level agreements.”

Santana said the latest crisis had also highlighted the need for residents to participate more actively in the city’s planning and budgeting processes. “If I had the same turnout for the integrated development plan sessions, and the budget, maybe we’ll get budget.”

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He welcomed the turnout at the community meeting, saying residents’ anger needed to be heard directly by the city. “I’m grateful the residents are showing up and showing their frustration, which is what I needed the city to understand. We pay our bills. We want the service.”

The councillor said the next step would be to monitor the interventions presented by JW, including the planned installation of air valves and investigations into recurring burst locations, while continuing to push for longer-term infrastructure solutions.

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