City Power distances itself from DA councillor’s water outage claims

Johannesburg’s City Power has distanced itself from allegations made by a Democratic Alliance (DA) official about the water outages that affected several neighbourhoods in the city.

This comes after councillor Nicole Van Dyk informed residents on social media that the regional power uility was responsible for the dry taps and drop in pumping pressure, citing yet another outage at Eikenhof.

City Power’s spokesperson, Isaac Mangena, said the information shared by Van Dyk was false and misleading.

Misleading info

“While the entity acknowledges the enormous weight of the inconvenience caused to the residents of Johannesburg, City Power believes that misleading information only serves to aggravate the situation.

“However, given the complex nature of our network and system operations, it’s understandable for many to misunderstand and misinterpret our functions,” Mangena said.

ALSO READ: Water supply restored as City Power completes repairs at Eikenhof substation

Outage

Mangena clarified that there was no outage from City Power’s side at Eikenhof over the weekend that affected Rand Water operations and ultimately, Joburg Water.

“On Saturday, Joburg Water reported a 90-minute-long outage that disrupted operations at the Zwartkopies pumping station. That power supply disruption was allegedly from Eskom’s side of supply.

“The main outage at Eikenhof substation which tampered with Rand Water operations only happened last week Monday following a flashover that damaged the feeder board that supplies power to the water utility. That outage was restored on Tuesday night as promised and Rand Water operations fully returned to service,” Mangena said.

Switch-on

City Power has apologised for the massive inconvenience that was caused during  the outage

“It’s worth noting that City Power is finalising plans to enable Rand Water to operate optimally even during outages or higher stages of load shedding. Those plans will be announced in due course.”

Meanwhile, City Power will be having a “switch-on” ceremony of the Diepkloof Hostel on Tuesday.

“This is the same hostel that was plagued by violent protests a year ago, with residents blockading the N12 and other major routes, demanding electricity supply.”

ALSO READ: Joburg staring down the barrel of a catastrophic water supply crisis