Gauteng won’t be without water in summer, says Lesufi

The Premier of Gauteng Panyaza Lesufi has promised the province a summer without water woes.

Panyaza made this promise on Thursday during his speech at the opening of the Gauteng Legislature at the Nasrec Expo Centre in Johannesburg.

“To address the current water crisis, we are firming up our strategic water resource protection interventions.

“I’m proud that tomorrow, together with Rand Water, we will have a meeting with all executive mayors of all our municipalities to ensure that come this summer we don’t have a shortage of water in the province of Gauteng,” he said.

Water crisis solutions are there – Panyaza

Gauteng’s persistent water crisis can be attributed to leaking and burst pipes, insufficient reservoirs, decaying infrastructure and delays in infrastructure projects.

Lesufi said his department would assist municipalities to “drastically” lessen leaks in their distribution systems.

“We will enhance the implementation of wetland rehabilitation, river health, groundwater monitoring and related interventions,” he added.

Speaking at the meeting held with Rand Water, Gauteng Department of Cooperative Governance (CoGTA) MEC Jacob Mamabolo, and metropolitan municipalities mayors on Friday, Lesufi said the solutions to ending the water crisis in Gauteng were present.

The meeting aimed to address water supply and usage issues, power outages, regular infrastructure maintenance, wastage, and vandalism.

ALSO READ: ‘Catastrophic’ water insecurity looms for Johannesburg, warns WaterCAN

According to Lesufi the two main challenges causing water issues were leakages and debt.

However, he said these present solutions needed to be packaged through implementing systematic and realistic interventions.

Referring to Rand Water he said: “If you can say in the next two months all municipalities must pay your debt, I can tell you Rand Water, it’s not going to happen.”

Additionally, he said the municipalities do not have the money to pay their water debts, which is part of the reason causing water issues.

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Rand Water maintenance

Pre, during and post the recently concluded 37-day Rand Water maintenance, debates regarding water insecurities in the province have flowed endlessly.

The focal points of these debates have been the ageing and collapsing water infrastructure.

Reports and webinars have shared that Gauteng deals with water losses of around 41% due to leakages, with Rand Water’s losses being relatively lower at 3 to 4%.

During the utility’s extensive maintenance project, areas in Soweto, Tshwane and suburban regions including Randburg and Northcliff battled shortages with intermittent supply, while some areas had no water due to burst pipelines. 

After the Rand Water maintenance, Johannesburg Water stated that full recovery of the systems is expected to take several days, with areas supplied by Sandton and Midrand reservoirs and towers potentially taking longer to recover.

When pipes burst it sometimes takes weeks of wasted water before they are fixed.

It has previously been reported that the City of Johannesburg allocates only R1 billion for its water infrastructure maintenance bill. This is a stark contrast to the R2 billion that is required.