THOUSANDS of residents are forced to look for other means to find water for cooking food and other house chores since eThekwini Municipality implemented water rationing today, Monday.
This is the warning by the municipality spokesperson, Msawakhe Mayisela, who confirmed that eThekwini residents in areas supplied by the Durban Heights water treatment plant will be left without water during the period of water rationing.
“The message is clear – people must prepare themselves and ensure they store enough water that will last them during the shutdown. This should be understood the same way as load shedding, where people remain without electricity for that particular period,” said Mayisela.
Related article: Municipality implements ‘water-shedding’ schedule
Last week, the City said water rationing has become necessary due to reduced water supply from the plant which is managed by Umgeni Water.
“This shortfall will remain for the next 10-12 months because Umgeni Water is unable to receive adequate raw water from Nagle Dam due to the extensive damage by heavy rainfall to two raw water pipelines in April 2022. While Umgeni Water continues to make progress in providing full contracted volumes of drinking water to eThekwini, a shortfall remains and will be eradicated when the damaged pipelines are repaired and recommissioned,” reads the eThekwini statement .
According to the municipality, Umgeni still requires an additional 40 million litres per day to meet the full amount of potable water that is constrained to supply eThekwini.
The City cautions its customers against stockpiling water in their homes as this could collapse the already constrained system.
“Because water rationing is a planned event, tankers will not be dispatched to cover the rationing period. The tankers will be dispatched to areas experiencing outages as opposed to rationing,” said the City.
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At the time of going to press, the contents of this feature mirrored South Africa’s lockdown regulations.
