Power outages may cut Joburg water supply

Power cuts during the latest bout of load shedding could affect municipal and government services for Johannesburg residents.

Yesterday, Johannesburg Water warned residents to expect water shortages and reduced water pressure in some areas. The municipality makes use of electricity to pump water from reservoirs into water towers.

According to environment and infrastructure MMC Nico de Jager, some areas may be affected in terms of water supply, but not necessarily sewerage.

Reports from Durban suggested there were concerns that, should load shedding progress to stage 4, sewage may overflow, leading to spillages.

For Johannesburg, De Jager said, this was not a concern, but he warned that some high-density areas may run out of water.

“Water supply is where there might be a problem because we need electricity to pump water to and from the reservoirs and to our towers.”

For instance, Crosby and Auckland Park were areas usually affected – including the Melville area – because they are high density.

“As soon as load shedding hits, they often run out of water, which is also why we call on all residents to use water sparingly, especially around this time of the year.”

Meanwhile, the education and health departments said the effect on their operations so far was minimal.

Coinciding with a crucial exam period, rolling blackouts this week affected information technology (IT) matric exams which took place on Thursday.

According to education department spokesperson Steve Mabona, of the 1,218 full-time and six part-time candidates registered for the IT examinations, 1,211 full-time and four part-time students, wrote the exam.

“There were no major incidences of load shedding reported that affected the examinations adversely,” said Mabona.

Nine pupils were rescheduled to write at a later date.

On Wednesday, according to the department, out of its 36 examination centres, only 26 managed to complete the exams with the use of generators, which were on stand-by as a contingency plan.

Matric students were writing computer application technology examinations. Some were taken to other centres to write.

In 10 of the centres, examinations could not be written and 317 pupils would have to write their exams at a later date.

Patients at government clinics and hospitals were unlikely to be adversely affected unless generators were being poorly maintained, said Democratic Alliance shadow MEC for health Jack Bloom.

“It [load shedding] has happened before, so the department is going to have generators, but there also needs to be enough fuel in the generators, and they need to be tested once a week to make sure they have enough diesel.”

He added that the most important function for electricity in clinics would be refrigerators for medicines, which could be affected during load shedding.

In hospitals, Bloom said, only emergency operations would be conducted in theatres.

– simnikiweh@citizen.co.za

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