About once a week, residents all down Trezona Avenue on Krugersdorp’s side wake up or come home to dry taps. As a few community members have reported, construction work on various sidewalks has been dragging on since March, causing water supply to be interrupted, sometimes without warning.
Mindalore resident Louwretta Jacobs explained that, “The water was off every week except during total lockdown, and they’re still not done in front of our house.
There were days that we could not drive into our property at any one of our three entrances. Every time they got a excavator to dig, seemingly to find a leaking pipe.”
By the end of September, Louwretta and other residents were fed up with the situation and the News office was inundated with phone calls from community members enquiring about the cause of the problems.
That construction on sidewalks and in the roads occurring throughout the months were obvious, but many were speculating as to what exactly was being done.
The Mogale City Local Municipality (MCLM) explained that two factors contributed to the water woes. The first was said to be fibre optic internet installations throughout the area.
“It came to the municipality’s attention that fibre optic companies are damaging municipal infrastructure while digging trenches to install underground telecommunication cables,” said MCLM’s Corporate Communications’ Refilwe Mabena, adding that, “Our Water Services Division has, however, had a meeting with these contractors and companies to ensure that by-laws are being complied with as continuous pipe replacements due to bursts were costing MCLM thousands of rands in repairs while also affecting water supply to the public.”
Secondly, the MCLM explained that an aged and corroding infrastructure in the area obligated the municipality to replace pipes in key locations.
In March, our Water Services through appointed contractors started to replace existing asbestos pipe infrastructure that has corroded and reached the end of its life span,” Refilwe noted.
“As a result of this work being performed, water supply had to be suspended frequently for work to be done on these pipelines.”
According to the MCLM, community members were invited to a public meeting to discuss the water supply problems.
Refilwe noted that, “Water interruption messages were shared via WhatsApp groups. Water tankers were placed at Richardson Avenue and Cowie Street, while roaming tankers were driving around the area to ensure that residents had access to clean and safe water.” The main problem the community seems to have, as pointed out by councillor Dennis Pretorius is that “… after several months, the contractor still has not completed the contract.
This has resulted in residents having to put up with open trenches both on pavements and in the roads, and almost daily water outages caused by burst pipes.”
The MCLM lastly stated that, “The aged pipeline replacement project in Mindalore is expected to be completed on 22 September”. The News visited the area and noted that there were still open work areas in the days following this cut-off date.
