Acsa disputes claims OR Tambo tenants weren’t warned about water outage

Airports Company SA (Acsa) has disputed that tenants were not informed ahead of time of maintenance work on a leaking valve at OR Tambo Airport.

Acsa spokesperson Ofentse Dijoe said yesterday stakeholders were notified in advance of the maintenance work.

Planned maintenance leads to temporary water outage at airport

Taps ran dry for several hours at OR Tambo International Airport over weekend after what Acsa said was planned maintenance work on the leaking valve.

The outage affected water supply in both the domestic and international terminals on Saturday morning.

Dijoe said stakeholders were notified of the maintenance work via e-mail on Thursday, with follow-up reminders sent to the Airport Stakeholder and Commercial Partners WhatsApp groups the next day.

Acsa said maintenance began at 11.30pm on Friday and was due to conclude by 5am on Saturday.

However, an unexpected hitch delayed the work and water was only restored at around 10am.

“The project involved replacing a leaking valve to prevent critical water loss,” said Dijoe.

“While isolating the water supply, upstream backflow flooded the valve chamber. For the safety of the maintenance team, work was paused to pump out the chamber.”

Dijoe said the unexpected flooding in the valve chamber caused the repair work to take longer than planned.

“This unexpected delay resulted in water being restored at 10am on Saturday, five hours behind schedule,” he said.

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Businesses report losses and operational disruptions

An irate tenant told The Citizen there was nowhere for people to relieve themselves and nowhere to wash hands.

A restaurateur said the outage cost their business around R10  000 in revenue.

“Not only could I not brew coffee, we could not wash dishes and kitchen staff could not wash their hands. In a short space of time it became a health risk,” they said.

The restaurateur added if only 10 of the several eateries at the airport experienced similar losses, the disruption could have cost tenants several hundred thousand rands collectively.

“But, of course, we will not be compensated. As a matter of fact, we didn’t know it was coming.”

Passengers react with frustration on social media

Passengers expressed their outrage on social media as the disruption unfolded.

“We have family waiting for flights at the airport and no toilets are open,” one traveller posted on Facebook.

The DA’s Joburg mayoral candidate, Helen Zille, said the outage was “incredible in the true sense of the word”.

Other remarks online showed a measure of SA humour. One X user wrote: “On the brighter side, two 20+ year old cadres’ sons won a R263m tender to provide water from truck tankers. Why get cheap water from your taps when ANC elites’ kids can deliver it…”

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