Something very wrong at Rand Water: Tshwane mayor on supply challenges

After a week of Rand Water outages in Tshwane, mayor Cilliers Brink says things are slowly starting to recover.

Brink confirmed on Tuesday that large parts of the city were without water. He said the problem occurred at the weekend when, at short notice, Rand Water informed Tshwane that it was suffering power outages which were affecting water supply.

Noting the city depends on Rand Water for upward of 70% of its supply, Brink said since December, the city had suffered with no water or water pressure issues monthly.

“I know we are not the only city affected, but I am the mayor of Tshwane, I have to address it for our residents. We've had this recurring problem every month, with either no notice or short notice.

“We've had meetings with Rand Water and they have talked about load-shedding. We haven't had load-shedding in the past week. They have spoken about cable theft and vandalism, which we understand.

“When we try to ask for information, in particular for Rand Water to share water levels with the city and for them to notify us in advance of maintenance issues, that's just ignored, so that tells us there is something very wrong at Rand Water.”

Brink said he has written to the chairperson of the board and copied the minister of water and sanitation on the issue.

He added that he was informing Tshwane residents because the situation will be ongoing.

“The city does have an arrear bill with Rand Water, but I want to be very clear that what is happening now and what has happened since December isn't credit action, it can't be credit action. Credit action can only happen on notice. We are also in continuous talks with Rand Water about our bill and settling it.

“The problems we face now are operational issues at Rand Water and that is what my team and I are going to address in the week ahead.”

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