‘We should be investing R3 billion annually’: City of Joburg speaks on water crisis

The City of Johannesburg says it needs approximately R3 billion per year to address the issue of poor infrastructure as residents grapple with consistent water cuts.

Joburg officials on Friday provided an update regarding the water crisis impacting households across the city.

The metropolitan municipality has been facing water problems due to power outages at the Eikenhof pump station.

The water issues have persisted since late last year, with frequent shutdowns affecting various parts of the city.

Joburg water systems

In the media briefing, Johannesburg Water‘s operations manager, Logan Munsamy said the good news is that the systems are back on track, and water will be fully restored by Friday afternoon.

Munsamy revealed that one of the causes of the water crisis was due to increasing demand.

The city’s water system is operating at a higher-than-desired level, according to the Joburg Water official.

This increased demand, coupled with hot weather conditions, has put a strain on the water supply.

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“It’s not only the hot weather conditions, there’s leakage, there’s densification in these areas, some of them are growing and infrastructure is also old and needs a bit of TLC and upgrades,” said Munsamy.

He further said these issues need to be addressed to better manage the water system.

By reducing overall consumption and improving infrastructure, there will be more capacity in the reservoirs, providing a buffer during interruptions.

Aging water infrastructure

Johannesburg Water’s managing director, Ntshavheni Mukwevho, acknowledged the city was dealing with an issue of aging infrastructure.

“We have a challenge of backlogs — and these backlogs are a result of historically we should have been investing at a higher pace than what we have invested.

“Currently, we have a backlog of R1.7 billion so these are the infrastructure that we should have bought or replaced in terms of existing infrastructure,” he said.

Mukwevho said currently, the city invests about R1 billion annually in infrastructure renewal and expansion. However, there is a gap between the actual investment and what should be invested to address the aging infrastructure effectively.

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“This R1 billion — looking at both renewal or replacement of assets as well as expansion in terms of capacity, going into all these various categories of renewal is about a billion rand,” he said.

Additionally, Mukwevho said there’s a gap between what is invested and what should be invested.

To deal with this issue in the long term, the managing director said the city needed to invest approximately R3 billion for replacing and renewing existing infrastructure for it to properly serve its purpose.

Furthermore, he said they were looking to partner with the private sector in “fast tracking the issue of investment”.

No water crisis

Johannesburg mayor, Kabelo Gwamanda said the water system was in a “better condition than it was last week”.

He also said that all systems were recovering and clarified that the areas that are still affected are only facing low water pressure not complete outages.

Gwamanda opposed the notion that Joburg is facing a water crisis.

“We’re not even close to assuming it’s a crisis, we have access to water. We were experiencing a technical issue, [something] natural – when a lightning strike shut down the Eikenhof pump station. We responded with mitigating measures, like sending in water tankers,” he said.

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