Lyndhurst resident is at her wit’s end with Johannesburg Water

In a desperate plea to repair and reinstate her sunken driveway, Lyndhurst resident Yolanda Armoogam reached out to the local paper on January 19 as her last resort.

Armoogram, who was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic colon cancer, said the problem with her driveway began on January 4.

“We noticed that our driveway was damaged due to water pressure from a water pipe. Johannesburg Water workers came out and unearthed part of the road and my driveway leaving a huge hole behind.”

She added that she would not be desperate if the situation did not affect her health and her husband potentially losing his job due to him being an area manager who cannot drive his car in and out of the driveway.

The resident explained that not only has the matter affected her health in terms of stress but it has also been costly due to her making alternative transport arrangements to her chemotherapy sessions at the hospital.

Johannesburg Water’s spokesperson Nombuso Shabalala confirmed that backfilling would be complete by January 26, and the reinstatement work is scheduled by February 9. This means the resident will have to wait for potentially another 14 days until they may see some relief.

“Johannesburg Water is facing a huge backlog of reinstatements around the city, which we are working on around the clock with both internal teams and service providers to complete. Work is scheduled according to capacity, some reinstatement jobs may take longer to complete.”

She added that ageing infrastructure also played a role in that as the number of bursts increases, the number of excavations also increases. Resource availability, which is both financial and human, became a challenge.

Ammorgam explained that she had to spend extra money on e-hailing services which is not sustainable in the long term as her medical expenses are high. On the other hand, her husband’s job requires him to drive to stores as an area manager and he runs the risk of losing his job as he cannot get his work vehicle out of the yard.

“We cannot afford for him to lose his job due to my health situation. My mother-in-law also lives with us, her health is not in great shape as she too had cancer, we are scared that if she falls ill and it is an emergency, we will not be able to take her to the hospital.”

Shabalala noted that Johannesburg Water increased the working times of reinstatement teams especially over weekends to catch up with these ever-increasing reinstatement jobs. She added that the skills required for burst pipe repairs and reinstatement work is different, “Therefore, Johannesburg Water has separate teams for burst pipe repairs and reinstatement work.”

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