Sosh residents without water for 8 days
"We cannot flush our toilets, we cannot bath and everyone is scrambling for water when the water tankers arrive."
Despite water being restored in most parts of Tshwane on Sunday, residents of Soshanguve block KK, were still without the commodity on Monday.
The residents barricaded roads with burning tyres and rocks to express their unhappiness with the water crisis.
Residents said they had been without water for eight days, and they felt they had been taken advantage of by the metro.
“We have been without water since last week Sunday, and it is Monday today. Water was restored in other blocks on Sunday morning, but we are still without water.
“We feel the city is taking advantage because we have not engaged in any protests. We feel unfairly treated. Last week it was understandable because we all did not have water,” residents said.
A resident in the area, Abel Mamabolo, said the water issue has caused a lot of frustrations within the community.
“We cannot cook and we live in times of Covid, but we cannot even wash our hands to keep good hygiene. We have been living on bread for the past week, and some community members cannot even afford to buy bread.
“We cannot flush our toilets, we cannot bath and everyone is scrambling for water when the water tankers arrive. We also fear that the gathering of people while waiting for the tankers might be a way to spread Covid because they are not following safety regulations.”
Mamabolo said despite not being happy about the water crisis in the area, he did not agree with the barricading of roads.
“This will affect us in the long run. We will be the ones complaining about the infrastructure soon. The same people who are damaging the roads will be the very same people complaining about damaged roads.”
The Tshwane metro said after the restoration of water supply to most areas affected by outages, that a few areas in region 1, namely, Mabopane block X, X extension and M were still without water.
“Preliminary investigations into the cause of the delay revealed that there is a pipe burst in block X that is hindering the restoration of this essential service. Plans for repairs are currently underway. It is not yet known as to when the team would conclude the repair work and the ultimate restoration of water supply to the three affected areas.
“Meanwhile, several parts of Soshanguve are still without water. It was discovered that the control valve pilots at the block DD reservoir were stolen, which resulted in little inflow of water to the reservoir, rendering the restoration efforts fruitless. The team has resorted to manually opening the inflow valves to the reservoir until the stolen ones are replaced.”
Areas affected in Soshanguve are:
Blocks R, S, T, V, W, P and Y, block AA, IA, BB, DD, FF, GG, HH, JJ, KK and NN, block SS extension 1 and 2.
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