Estates get service delivery answers
CRAIGAVON - Residents of Waterford Estate and Cedar Lakes voiced their service delivery frustrations at a round table discussion with ward councillor for Ward 96, Matome Mafokwane.
Mafokwane invited representatives from the City of Joburg, Johannesburg Water and City Power to the discussion so that residents could get answers about pressing issues in the two estates.
While representatives of City of Joburg and Johannesburg Water attended the meeting, City Power was not represented. Irene du Plessis, estate manager of Waterford Estate, said there had been a number of water outages in the area and that at one stage a leaking mainline water pipe in the estate had taken three months to fix.
Kevin Nicholsen, chairperson of the Cedar Lakes residents’ association said water outages were commonplace in his estate too. He also said residents were unhappy about the drop in water pressure every morning which made showering a problem.
Representatives of Johannesburg Water said the water outages at both estates were chiefly due to a water pipe in Shore Street which needed to be repaired. The representatives said a works request had been submitted and the repair work was in the process of being done. With regards to the water pressure issues, the Johannesburg Water representatives said the water pressure has been dropped across the board in Johannesburg as it was a preventative measure to avoid pipe bursts.
Nicholsen and du Plessis also questioned why it took 48 hours for water tankers to be deployed during a water outage, as they felt it was inconvenient and unhygienic to be without water for so long. Johannesburg Water said during a planned water outage, trucks were deployed immediately, however if an emergency outage occurred their response time was usually 48 hours. The representatives clarified that water trucks would only be deployed if a main water pipe had burst or anything that would take a long time to repair.
When asked what a “long time” constituted, the representatives said anything more than 12 hours was considered long. Mafokwane said he would follow up with City Power and get them to address the residents of Waterford Estate and Cedar Lakes as soon as possible.
