• Sarah Schoonwinkel writes:
My husband and I reside in West Village which has long been the abandoned child of the municipality. This area is sorely neglected, with illegal food outlets that have no water, toilets or means by which those preparing the food can wash up or store food safely. West Village is surrounded by dumped building rubble, litter and shoulder-high weeds on the verges which residents are obliged to cut themselves.
Illegal building is carried out without hesitation and poorly constructed rooms spring up everywhere which put residents at risk. No action is taken by the municipality even though we have registered complaints regarding these matters; yet we pay our rates, our electricity bills and of course we pay for the water. Water we don’t receive.
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For almost three months now we have had our water supply curtailed between midnight and approximately 06:30 every day. Some mornings we will have a tiny trickle of water, and on others, like this morning, absolutely no water at all.
I rise daily at 04:30 to shower to get ready for work. I yet again had to wash in a bucket of cold water – water my husband stores in five-litre bottles as we know that our water supply is uncertain. From early Tuesday morning to Wednesday afternoon this week (first week of May) there was no water.
We contacted the local ward councillor several times who assured us that there was a water tanker in place whereupon my husband went out to look for it, in vain. Usually on such occasions the large open common behind our house is the venue for meetings, tankers, Dept of Health mobile vaccination clinics and so on. Not in this case: it was completely devoid of anything remotely resembling a water tanker. After several calls to the ward councillor he assured us that a tanker was in place but our denials didn’t result in the materialisation of a tanker. However when I got home at 17:17 on that Wednesday afternoon after the water had been restored: voilà! A water tanker, completely surplus to requirements now that the water supply was fully restored. What a waste of taxpayers’ money – the tanker, the diesel, the water, and the driver’s payment. Such incompetence and poor management. No tanker when the Village needed one!
Also read: Why West Village has a water supply problem
I have contacted the mayor as well as Mogale City on Twitter. The mayor always responds to my messages on Twitter but after dozens of messages I am still waiting for a response from Mogale City. They do not answer their telephones, their emails or messages directed to them on Twitter.
Their blatant disrespect for the residents of West Village is despicable, shocking and entirely uncalled for. Although I have had answers from the mayor regarding the reasons for our non-existent water supply every morning those reasons are unacceptable to me, as no plan of action to remedy the situation has been offered or discussed.
While these reasons provided to me by the mayor might seem on the face of it to be acceptable or even in parts logical, they are of no help to us, the Villagers. What we want, indeed what we expect, is an action plan and actual results arising from this plan. No solutions to this litany of problems has been put forward and it would appear that very little is being done to resolve this matter. Is it too much to expect a hot shower when I get up for work? I wouldn’t have thought so, but it appears that Mogale City disagrees! The money we West Villagers pay for these services is the same colour as the money those residing in upmarket areas pay. Kindly do us the courtesy of providing us with the services for which we have paid!
Also read: LETTER: Water woes, unfixed roads: Nothing gets fixed in West Village
According to Schoonwinkel, the mayor gave the following reasons:
1. There is a long-standing dispute between Mogale City and the West Rand Consolidated Mines (WRCM), dating back to 2017. Five years unresolved! How childish – surely some effort could have been made during this time to find common ground? And why are we, the residents of West Village, paying the price for this disagreement?
2. There is an irregular Service Level Agreement between both the Municipality and WRCM which must be formalised. Again I ask: why is West Village being punished for a Service Level Agreement what we don’t even know the terms of, much less have anything to do with?
3. There is a separate dispute between WRCM and the Municipality regarding payments which Mogale City claims are outstanding in spite of the fact that WRCM has produced proofs of payment for every disputed invoice. Yet again: this is not our problem. We have paid our bills and expect the services for which we have paid.
4. I was told that the power supply to our reservoir is uncertain due to the payment dispute detailed in point 3 above and that a generator was placed there in order to guarantee an uninterrupted supply of water. If this is the case I hate to break it to them: it’s not helping. Perhaps the zama zamas have stolen the generator. Another casualty of this argument is the set of traffic lights at the intersection of Windsor Road and West Village Main Gate Close. Between 18:00 and 06:00 the electricity supplying these lights is connected. Promptly at 06:00 every morning the power is disconnected. We have complained about this as it’s an extremely busy intersection used by very heavy-duty trucks and this ridiculous process is dangerous, and will sooner or later result in a fatal accident. As our house is very close to this intersection we are treated to ringside seats and have lost count of the number of accidents that have taken place here due to the absence of traffic lights.
5. Lastly I am informed that the zama zamas make use of the West Village water supply to operate their illegal refinery process. I would not be at all surprised to find that this is true. However what I do find rather difficult to understand is how the zama zamas manage to tap into our water supply at precisely the same time every night resulting in the cessation of our water supply and then restore it again at 06:30. They would seem to be better organised than the municipality! No, that doesn’t make any sense. The cause of our water supply interruption is not zama zamas: it’s deliberately disconnected by the municipality. I have a solution to the zama zama problem though: arrest them. But that will not happen because the police are terrified of these heavily armed thieves. Almost every night we are treated to the sounds of a gun battle yet never, not once, does the sound of a police siren break through the sounds of the shots. Not ever.
