Taps run dry in Soshanguve after ‘challenge’ at Rand Water plant

The City of Tshwane has confirmed a water outage is affecting parts of Soshanguve after Rand Water alerted it to a “challenge” at its Zuikerbosch water purification plant on Saturday.

The city said “an isolated incident of filters clogging” had affected operations at the plant.

“The incident affected the Soshanguve L reservoirs which ran empty overnight, leaving the Soshanguve areas without water.

“Rand Water has informed the city that the challenge is now resolved and the system is recovering. Rand Water and the city’s technical teams are monitoring the system, however [it] will take some time to recover and stabilise. Water tankers have been dispatched to the affected areas.”

The city apologised for the inconvenience to residents.

Rand Water earlier this week said it was not responsible for water outages that have plagued Gauteng as the entity continues to pump water despite billions of rand being owed by municipalities.

The entity said it pumped 5-billion litres of water per day which is sold in bulk to municipalities. However, due to consumption and leakage, there are issues in the three metro municipalities in Gauteng which account for 77% of the water Rand Water supplies.

Rand Water also highlighted challenges around not being paid on time by municipalities, so the revenue intended for infrastructure development is not being received.

Tshwane is one of the biggest culprits, owing Rand Water R690m, while Ekurhuleni owes R440m, according to the entity. 

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