Joburg water shortage continues
JOBURG- Residents in the Johannesburg West area are furious as they are still out of water. Some have not had water for eight days.
Rand Water needs water.
“Rand Water is still experiencing serious water shortage as a result of increasing demand and soaring temperatures in the Gauteng Province. The situation has been exacerbated by the electricity supply outage on 15 September at the Eikenhof pumping station,” says Justice Mohale Rand Water media relations manager.
Since the power outage took place, Rand Water could not recover to fill in some of its reservoirs.
“It became difficult for the water levels to stabilise as the demand always increased during the peak period when most people would be back from work,” he said.
According to Mohale, this resulted in Rand Water being unable to pump water to some of their reservoirs, supplying mainly western and southern of Johannesburg, parts of the West Rand and Ekurhuleni.
Although Mohale had made a statement that there will be water tanks in the affected areas, some residents say they have not seen these.
“There are no tanks in Brixton and we have had to live without water for the past five days,” said Brixton resident Michael Bout.
The situation is the same for Newlands and Claremont.
“The water has been coming and going since last week, we need to know what is going on and we need this situation resolved because we cannot live without water,” said Newlands resident Feun van Zyl.
Sophiatown residents, on the other hand, have had enough of the water problem as they have been without water for eight days. Resident Dauw Steyn is so frustrated that he has written a letter to President Jacob Zuma.
“Please can something be done about this unbearable situation; we have been begging for a water tanker for a week now without success. We have reached the stage where the community is now ready to come together to start protesting against government’s inability to provide services and, as a matter of fact, basic human needs to the people of Sophiatown,” said Steyn in the letter.
Joburg Water’s Millicent Kabwe said they have resolved the matter in numerous parts of the region and are working on ensuring that everyone gets running water.
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