Melrose residents have expressed their frustrations regarding water service delivery.
On 22 July, a massive pipe burst occurred in Melrose, leading to large amounts of water being lost at an alarming rate. Throughout the crisis which took about a day and some hours, Ward 74 councillor Dave Fisher, along with a variety of concerned residents reported the issue to Joburg Water.
The repair process resulted in either further burst pipes or surrounding areas left without water. The burst pipe was finally stopped from leaking water after close to 24 hours. The Johannesburg Water team worked on reparations and restoring water to the suburbs until at about 7pm on 23 July.
Fisher said, “Resident may be aware that the City has recently successfully passed the 2020/2021 budget. One of the interventions that we were successful in adding to the budget was additional capital provision for water network upgrades. The current challenges in Melrose are both ageing infrastructure and the impact of Covid-19 on our experienced and knowledgeable Johannesburg Water staff.”
Besides burst pipes however, residents within the Saxonwold community group raised issues of uneven, broken pavements with exposed pipes and sinking after a recent burst pipe replacement project. In response to this, on behalf of the Saxonwold and Parkwood Residents Association (Sapra), secretary Caryn Turnbull said the issues were being addressed and the project was not finished yet.
She added, “All paying members who read their newsletter have been told not to sign off on any letters until they are happy with the state of their pavement and it has been reinstated as they found it. Sapra asks for photos so we can send to the community liaison officer and it can be rectified.”
Johannesburg Water spokesperson Isaac Dhludhlu said burst pipes will be a problem for a long time to come. “This is mainly because the City has a backlog of about R10 billion infrastructure repairs that need to be done. At the moment budget is insufficient and until such a time as when we get that amount, we are obliged to select and prioritise areas… within the seven regions that we serve,” said Dhludhlu.
He added that the ageing infrastructure was made of material such as asbestos which is not easy to work with plus pipeline networks could reach 11 000 km therefore replacing that would not be an easy task. Dhludhlu explained that repairing burst pipes always resulted in the surrounding pipes also bursting due to the pressure process when water was restored.
“In terms of restoration of pavements, residents need to be patient when it comes to that. First of all, the team that does the repairs is not the same one that does the reinstatement. The reinstatement team needs to wait for a few days or weeks before closing up the dug-up areas in order to make sure the replaced pipes won’t burst again.” He also said that due to Covid-19 the workers were not working at full capacity.
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