It’s over − Rand Water completes 58-hour maintenance

The excruciating 58-hour planned Rand Water maintenance project has been successfully completed.

The announcement was made by the water utility early on Friday morning.

Rand Water said the system will take time to replenish reserves and water supply.

“The 58-hour planned maintenance project that commenced on Tuesday, 11 July at 19:00 has been successfully completed. Rand Water is now recharging and filling up the system.

“Kindly note that the system will require time to fully recover.  Thank you to all our stakeholders for your understanding, patience and support,” Rand Water said.

The planned shutdown affected more than 220 suburbs.

Purpose

The purpose of the shutdown was to replace or upgrade old critical infrastructure and reduce unplanned infrastructure breakdowns.

The shutdown forced residents to panic buy and store water for the outage in scenes similar to those of the Covid lockdown.

ALSO READ: Joburg water outage: Come rain or snow… 58-hour shutdown starts on Tuesday

Stage 6 load shedding

Meanwhile, South African’s will have to contend with another with saga after Eskom announced stage 6 load shedding for the entire weekend.

The parastatal said the higher stages of the deliberate power cuts was due to the cold weather and increase in electricity demand and in order to replenish emergency reserves.

Interim spokesperson Daphne Mokwena said the higher stages of load shedding could set a possible path for the reduction in the deliberate power cuts for the coming week.

“The increase in the demand for electricity due to the cold weather, particularly on Monday and Tuesday, was anticipated. However, this demand exceeded what was forecasted. Eskom is obliged to carry generation reserves to cater for unforeseen events.

“These reserves were used on Monday and Tuesday to buffer the effects of the cold weather. Unfortunately, due to the failure of additional generation units since Sunday, the reserves have been depleted and can no longer buffer the lingering effects of the cold weather and make up for the lost generation capacity,” Mokwena explained.

ALSO READ: Eskom imposes stage 6 load shedding for entire weekend due to cold weather