Stop punishing us with water cuts

There’s probably no good time to restrict or cut off water supplies to perform essential maintenance – but, according to Rand Water, the least awful time is coming up this weekend.

So, Joburg residents, suck it up for the 86 hours that your taps may dribble or run completely dry.

The maintenance to the Eikenhof pumping station will affect at least 60% of the city’s suburbs from tomorrow until Monday.

But, says Rand Water, the good news is that this period “is particularly suitable for such work due to the closure of industries and, by extension, the temporary depopulation of Gauteng as residents travel for holidays.”

Apart from the fact we think they are grossly over-estimating how many people will be able to afford to go away at all this year, we have to wonder why the timeframe is so long. Could this work not have been split into smaller chunks, so the disruption would have been shorter?

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Water advocacy network WaterCAN’s executive manager Ferrial Adam said “many communities are still reeling from recent water shortages and protests”, adding that “residents of Johannesburg deserve a break from these repeated disruptions”.

Adam also posed pertinent questions: “If this maintenance was planned, why has there been no consultation or explanation and communication? Why schedule it for the first long weekend of the festive season?”

The reality is Joburg residents are now paying the massive price of inconvenience and discomfort for decades of the water authorities having kicked the can down the road when it came to infrastructure maintenance.

Even as they try to point fingers at residents for wasting water, that squandering pales into insignificance when compared with the floods of water which gush away every second because of broken pipes and other infrastructure.

This is your fault, not ours – so stop punishing us.

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