Water sold like hot cakes in Randfontein

One man's loss is another man's gain. Water supplier in town reveals how their sales have been sky-high since the planned Rand Water shutdown.

Randgate resident Monica Phillips drove around Randfontein, looking for a place to buy water.

Scores of residents from different parts of Randfontein were recently seen scrambling around town for water and going above and beyond to find the precious resource.

This comes as the taps ran dry in almost the entire Randfontein and Westonaria due to the maintenance work carried out by Rand Water at one of its pump stations. This was from July 11 till July 14 and had a devastating effect on local households and businesses alike, as most of them were left without water.

Employee at Oasis Moffat Kamanga helped customers carry the bottled water that they had purchased.

While others stored enough water for the duration of the maintenance work, others did not.

The Randfontein Herald thus took to the streets to get a sense of how residents were affected by this and it became evident that they were faced with tough times.

• Also read: Be patient – municipality to the public as water levels are slowly but surely returning

Randgate resident Monica Phillips said she had been without water since July 13 and needed to refill urgently.

Oasis employee James Chongo helped serve residents at the store.

“We struggled with water since Thursday [July 13] and we’ve got nothing coming out of our taps. I unfortunately couldn’t get any at a water supplier so I’ll just have to drive around and try my luck elsewhere,” said Phillips.

Meanwhile, another resident Onkgopotse Motsa said he and his family had been without water for three days. He said it was difficult having to be without water for so long and added that he was happy to have at least gotten the packaged water at a water supplier.

Randfontein resident Onkgopotse Motsa was one of the many people who rushed to Oasis to purchase water. He, unfortunately, couldn’t refill but is glad to have gotten packaged bottled water.

At the time, the water-selling business had run out of water from their taps as well, to meet the demand for refills.

The Herald also spoke to Lia Visser and manager at Oasis which is a water supplier who said this is the highest their sales have been in a long time.

Residents made their way to Oasis with their empty bottles, with hopes of getting a refill.

“We’ve been extremely busy. We’ve been busier than ever before. We ran out of water for refills but we still had bottled water that we packed previously,” said Visser, who added that the sales have been amazing.

By Monday, July 17, although the Westergloor and Greenhills reservoirs were at nine and 11 % respectively, the Rand West City Local Municipality confirmed Rand Water’s water pressure is picking up but asked for patience.