Residents of Tshwane enter third week without water

Residents of Kirkney in Pretoria have entered their third week without water and while the municipality has deployed water tankers, this is allegedly not enough to cater for all residents.

Kirkney has been without water since August 11 and more than two weeks later, residents say their taps are either dry, release water at very low pressure or dirty brownish water spews out.

Resident Mogau Letswalo told TimesLIVE that days after having no water, they were not provided with a clear answer to the cause.

“The answers we are getting are not clear. The water first started coming out with small pressure or only at night after 10pm. But right now there is nothing. Even those who say there is water, the water is brown,” she said.

She said they were told something about a reservoir, but this answer was vague, resulting in the community protesting by burning tyres last week. This drew attention to them from the municipality, said Letswalo. 

But Monday morning was the worst for her and her family as there was no power in the area from the early hours of the morning.

“I got to work late. My children didn’t go to school because we had to boil water on the stove since the geyser was off. But there was no electricity and my children could therefore not go to school because there was no warm water. The power only returned at 7am,” she said.

City of Tshwane spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said the water outage was not related to the municipal workers’ strike that left the city stranded for service delivery.

Instead, the cause was linked to a low reservoir that was struggling to fill up, he said.

“The Hercules West reservoir ran dry and is battling to recover. This has affected all extensions of Kirkney, and restoration of water to Kirkney customers has nothing to do with the [municipal workers’] strike,” Mashigo said.

He said five water tankers have been sent out to all the affected areas within the ward.

However, according to Letswalo, the water tankers are not enough to supply the entire community. She said the water tankers had returned on Sunday after they went several days without them.

“People are complaining and some complained on Sunday that they found the water was finished. My children stopped getting water from the tankers as the water was not so clean. They have found a place to get water from a borehole. But we have to buy water. This is the problem we have been facing.

Mashigo said the city’s team is still on site to conduct investigations.

“An update will be communicated to the residents,” he said.

Meanwhile, residents of Soshanguve experienced the same thing at the weekend due to the Soshanguve L reservoirs having low water levels. 

By Monday morning there was a slight improvement in Soshanguve North, with the reservoir increasing to 12% and Soshanguve South by 20% from 0%. 

“The pumping of water to the tower can only be done when the reservoir is at least 35%.” 

TimesLIVE