North residents say regular water leaks bad for business

Business owners operating on Koos De La Rey Street in Pretoria North are frustrated by the constant water cuts due to pipes bursting at different sections of the road.

A total of 14 leaks have been reported to the Tshwane metro since April this year. This is according to Karen Yssel, an employee at a panel beating company.

“Once there is a leak, we know that our water will be cut for a minimum of two days. That slows our production rate down as we have to use a lot of water in our line of work.

“Within the panel beating business every process we go through requires water and without it, we are unable to produce as fast as we would have under normal circumstances,” Yssel said.

“We have to keep employees out of work to run around looking for a place that would give us water and it is costing the company money to constantly buy drinking water for staff members. There is a process that we have to do to keep our bathrooms sanitary during these water cuts,” she said.

Yssel highlighted that the workmanship shown by the contractors that come to fix the water leaks, is not up to scratch and they leave the mess for others to clean.

“They repair a leak and a few days later another leak will occur down the road. It seems like they just patch up the leak but never repair it properly.”

According to Yssel this is not the only issue, “they also leave all the rubble without fixing the holes that they have created”.

“Constant water flowing down the road has caused the road to erode which results in large potholes at the bottom of the road that unsuspecting motorists would drive into. And nothing is being done to repair it, motorists have resorted to driving on the pavement,” she said.

“We have been reporting these issues and the only update we receive is that the matter has been escalated.

“The infrastructure is old and they came to replace a portion of the road with a new pipeline but at that specific area water leaks are prevalent.”

A vendor that sells food along the road said that she has to wait for the water supply to resume before she can serve her customers, making the water cuts bad for her small business.

Local ward councillor Yolanda Duvenage said that she had escalated the issue to the appropriate director/team. On a regular basis she requests feedback then passes it on to the residents.

“We follow a chain of reporting and when issues are not addressed in a timely manner, or within the turn-around times, we can request intervention from a divisional head, regional head, regional MMC or portfolio MMC,” Duvenage said.

“Koos de la Rey has been riddled with water leaks the past two years because of the ageing infrastructure.

“It [the area] is part of the planned Pretoria North water infrastructure upgrade and hopefully we can soon look forward to having fewer or no water leaks in the entire Pretoria North suburb.”

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