Water supply in Nsikazi hampered by load-shedding and load reduction

Silulumanzi said the water supply in Nsikazi has been hampered by load-shedding and load reduction. Silulumanzi’s spokesperson, Richmond Jele, released a statement saying that the electricity outage is causing a huge backlog of water supply to the communities.

“These daily electricity outages result in the regional water treatment plant being off for a minimum of two hours daily,” said Jele.

“When the electricity is switched off from the Eskom grid due to stage 4 load-shedding, it causes eight hours to be lost. This means that for up to eight hours we are not able to extract water from the river, purify it and distribute it as per the agreed schedule.”

The statement said the water treatment plant needs to follow a strict stop-and-start procedure to operate safely and optimally while safeguarding the facility from serious damage, which could cause breakdowns.

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“To stop a plant of this size with a capacity of 60 million litres per day would normally require 20 to 30 minutes. To restart it can take between 30 and 40 minutes at a time.”

Jele said that if 50 minutes are added to each stage of load-shedding, it results in the downtime for the plant amounting up to 11.5 hours, during which Silulumanzi is unable to supply water from it.

“This means that only 50% of the daily water demand is able to be pumped into the water distribution system.

“The Nsikazi water supply system can take up to four days on full capacity just to catch up with the water distribution schedule to all areas dependent on this supply scheme. Even if load reduction is cancelled, we will still need between four and five days to get back to the agreed-upon scheduled water supply.”

Jele said water tankers are not effective and efficient, and the cost to use them is quite high and irrecoverable, because when the plant is off, no water from the network can feed them.

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“Schoolchildren dependent on meals from the schools’ feeding schemes are also negatively affected, causing a lack of cooked meals during school and even afterwards at home. Some of these children are from child-headed households.

“The massive and increasing number of illegal water connections on bulk water pump lines is seriously hampering the filling of reservoirs and thus causing major water leaks. Some of these illegal connections on the system are not located within sight of the main roads, and therefore take quite some time to discover, identify and repair. All of these factors are delaying the distribution and supply of water in an equitable manner.”

Silulumanzi has asked for understanding, common sense and patience during these trying times.