Mamelodi’s water shortage due to ‘theft’

Frustrated residents in Mamelodi have threatened to take matters into their own hands if their water crisis is not resolved soon.

Mamelodi resident Caroline Maluleka said they were fed up with living without water and were considering approaching the Human Rights Commission after not having water for more than 10 days.

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“Now the water is fixed in my area, but it’s on and off. I still don’t know what was wrong,” she said.

Maluleka said she heard a pipe burst close to the reservoir. “We didn’t have water last week until Friday, but during the night the water returned,” she said.

Maluleka said some of the neighbours with children struggled to bathe them and some schools sent the children home early because there wasn’t water.

“You can go without electricity, but not without water. Electricity, you can make a plan – but without water what plan can you make?”

Despite water returning to some areas as the reservoirs started to fill up over the weekend, residents reported the shortages were continuing.

Earlier this week, Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink and his team conducted an unannounced oversight visit in the area, following the complaints. Brink said the two-week-long water outage in Mamelodi was due to illegal connections and land invasions and that the city needed the support of the police.

“Our teams are working towards ensuring a stable supply of water for all residents. “As of yesterday morning, reservoir levels were improving, with Mamelodi R3 at 52% and Mamelodi R4 at 29%,” he said.

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The main issue was still illegal connections into the water systems by informal settlements, Brink said. “There is an increasing number of land invasions near our Mamelodi reservoirs.

“This has led to high levels of illegal connections on the water distribution network. This interrupts water supply to law-abiding residents.”

Brink added that if the fundamental issue was not addressed, the residents would face the same problem next month.

Brink also conducted a service delivery oversight visit in Hammanskraal, where city teams were catching up with grass cutting, patching potholes and fixing street lights.