The scramble for water continues in Johannesburg, with growing frustration among residents over prolonged outages that have left daily life disrupted in several communities.
This week, Executive Mayor Councillor Dada Morero visited affected areas, pledging to increase the number of water tankers to alleviate the shortages. However, some residents in areas such as Coronationville and Newclare took to the streets, demanding urgent and sustainable solutions.
In a briefing held today, Morero was joined by the MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Services, Councillor Jack Sekwaila, and Johannesburg Water Managing Director Ntshavheni Mukwevho to provide an update on the situation.
Mayor Morero acknowledged the severity of the crisis, especially the ongoing pressure on the Alexandra Park and Berea Reservoirs.
“We want to plead with communities around here that we are doing our level best and working around the clock to ensure that we have an uninterrupted supply of water, and we do apologise profusely for the challenges that they are faced with. But our teams are working around the clock to ensure that we can provide water in this area. Yes, there are plans that Joburg Water is putting in place to respond to this area so that the Alexandra reservoir does not continue to give us problems and challenges in the future.”
“So the certain projects that they are going to be implementing are going to ensure that in the future we are not faced with these problems. But we are doing everything that we can to ensure that the communities have enough water. We are going to increase water in terms of tankers; we are currently providing about 6 in this area, or the areas that are supplied by these reservoirs.”
Mukwevho also elaborated on the technical difficulties, explaining that reservoir levels need to reach at least 50% before water can be released to communities.
“The issue that we are dealing with is that for us to be able to reach those levels that the mayor indicated, we get satisfied when these particular reservoirs are at the 50% level so that we can supply water to the residents, but we prefer to be slightly higher than that. But the challenge that we find is that we are not able to reach that level daily, as we fill the reservoir through the night. So when we have not reached that reservoir level, we do not actually open it; we open it the next day after we have reached that level. So what we are going to do, to try and make sure that we improve the turnaround or filling of this reservoir to that level we require, is we are going to ensure that we intensify the issue of managing supply or throttling in other areas as a way of managing demand according to the city so that we can be able to improve the overall levels in the city of Johannesburg in terms of the reservoir levels,” he said.
Despite assurances, residents remain unconvinced, saying temporary measures like water tankers cannot replace consistent access to clean water. Pressure has been mounting on the City of Johannesburg to find long-term solutions as the crisis deepens.
anita.nkonki@inl.co.za
Saturday Star