‘How are we supposed to celebrate Mandela Day without water?’

In the wake of severe load shedding last week, several residents of the Emfuleni Local Municipality faced a double whammy of not having either electricity and water.

As the cold weather conditions from last week continued over the past weekend, residents continued experiencing water and electricity woes.

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With the resumption of inland schooling for the third term on Tuesday, the thought of preparing children for school also had many parents furious and frustrated, asking the municipality how they should even celebrate Mandela Day without basic services such as water.

A resident from Bophelong near Vanderbijlpark, Thabiso Maphike, said the water had not been restored and it only comes out at night.

“The worst part is that there’s no communication from the municipality or at least providing us with water tankers while they sort out the water issues.

“We have also been told that schools will be out by 10am on Tuesday morning because of the water crisis,” Maphike said.

Mantombi Mthombeni said she woke up just after 3am on Tuesday only to find water with very low pressure.

“It took me one hour and 30 minutes to fill up 60 litres of water before they closed the taps again at around 5am.

“The experience has been a very painful one,” Mthombeni said.

Richard Sehlabaka said not a single water tanker has been dispatched since the crisis started.

“We have resorted to purchasing water from local supermarkets for drinking, cooking, and bathing. We’re incurring additional costs due to this outage, and now that the schools have reopened its going to be worse.

“Emfuleni does not not care at all about what we have been going through as residents,” Sehlabaka added.

The municipality confirmed the water challenges which affected areas such as Vanderbijlpark, Sebokeng and Evaton was as a result of Rand Water’s 58-hour water shutdown, which was done to replace and upgrade old infrastructure last week.

Work on the maintenance shutdown was completed last week on Friday.

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When pressed for more details, including why water tankers were not provided for affected areas in Emfuleni, mayoral spokesperson Makhosonke Sangweni said the situation was caused by Rand Water and they are not sure when reservoirs would be filled.

In a Facebook post shared on Monday night, the municipality said the water supply interruptions were due to low water levels at several reservoirs and technical supply challenges at Rand Water’s pumping and purification systems.

The Vanderbijlpark reservoirs were empty with no estimate time for restoration (ETR).

Pieter Verbreek from the Democratic Alliance (DA) in Emfuleni said there is an absence of factual information.

“We have repeatedly sent the Member of Mayoral Committee (MMC) responsible for water questions seeking information about feedback on the water challenges, as well as when water tankers will be provided for affected residents, but we have not heard anything.

“What we have been hearing on the ground, is that there is too much air in the system following the maintenance work done on the Rand Water pipe and my understanding is that they will have to at some point they have to bleed the system out of air so that the water can flow,” said Verbreek.

One of the messages shared among ward councillors in a WhatsApp group suggested the pumpstation in Sasolburg is out of commission and cannot accept the water. It claimed that to allow for repairs to this (Sasolburg) pumpstation, Rand Water is only pumping at 25% of normal capacity.

“Rand Water technicians are currently busy with repairs at the pump station and once repaired Rand Water can increase the pumping capacity which will result in the reservoirs filling faster.

“At this stage no estimate time of repair can be given.”