Your article Use water sparingly, which was published on the news’ website, like much of the reporting on what only can be described as the West Rand Water Crisis, does not get to the heart of the matter.
I would like to point out that here in Noordheuwel we have not had a single drop of water for more than three days now. (There is no water to use – let alone use it sparingly!)
As is customary the municipality has provided no information to residents and the only mention that can be found is on the Mogale City website – which is both false and contradictory.
For the latest outage, Mogale City has placed the blame on Rand Water who has then blamed Eskom, this again according to Mogale City. It should be noted that Eskom and Rand Water have not provided any credible information to support the Mogale City claims. Further it should be noted that residents of the West Rand have been enduring periods (often stretching days to weeks) with no water for years now.
I can tell you that the word among residents is that aside from the complete lack of infrastructure maintenance (I can take you around the neighbourhood and show you the remains of all the broken pipes and leaking valves) and rife incompetence and corruption, there is the belief that money is outstanding between the various entities and this has resulted in services being restricted/ cut.
It would be heart warming to see journalists actually uncover the truth behind this sad state of affairs, because at the moment the reports mostly are restatements of apocryphal press releases.
