A treacle of water running from a tap is cause for celebration as businesses in the Kleinfontein Lake Office Park enter their eighth week of no water.
Since August 15, the taps to Lakeview Crescent have run dry, with countless incident reports to the City of Ekurhuleni (CoE) call centre going unanswered.
Despite the ongoing outage, businesses are still being billed according to interim readings of R700.
Meeting with the Benoni City Times, the office manager for Almac Farm Management, Debbie Engelbrecht said water woes left the approximately 15 businesses, operating from individual office blocks, scratching their heads.
“The taps located outside the buildings have low pressure, yet all the taps inside the buildings are dry,” she said.
“We lodged complaints with the CoE daily while reference numbers have been forwarded to the ward councillor, Sipho Ngobese, hoping it will escalate the matter.
“To date, the CoE gave us no explanation for the outage nor informed us when services will return to normal.”
Scrolling through a WhatsApp group dedicated to the business park, of which Ngobese is a member, strings of messages show complaint reference numbers and pleas from the businesses.
An August 16, a message forwarded by the councillor as received from a council employee at the water department states: “It’s the responsibility of the owner to install internal storage as per CoE approved by-laws.”
“The response we have received for the city has been absolutely shocking,” said Engelbrecht.
“An engineer has visited the area. He walked from one building to the next opening outside taps and fire hydrants. It was glaringly evident that the area was plagued with low to no water pressure, yet he surmised that there was no problem.
“A few days later, a team replaced a pipe feeding the area, yet there has been no change in the situation.”
Businesses including Bham and Dahya Attorneys, have since enlisted the expertise of independent plumbers to establish whether the continuous water supply issues could stem from internal issues.
“Following thorough investigations, contractors determined the cause of the problem rests with the city and can therefore not be mitigated privately,” said Engelbrecht.
As the days became weeks, interactions on the message group became increasingly desperate, as those affected started stockpiling water for hygiene purposes.
“On September 9, the city informed us they would deploy a water tanker while investigating the matte. However, the tanker did not do a complete rotation of the area and has since not been seen again,” she said.
“The irony of the situation is the city’s Department of Housing is in the office park and also had no access to water; yet there seems no urgency in resolving it.”
She felt the city was completely apathetic towards the situation.
“We are incurring extra expenses to ensure that staff have access to water, and we maintain hygiene protocols while ensuring that business activities continue without interruption,” she said.
“We cannot believe it is taking close to two months to have this matter resolved.”
Efforts to contact the Ngobese have gone unanswered, and no comment had been received from CoE spokesperson, Zweli Dlamini at the time of publication.
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