Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero said he has roped in law enforcement agencies to establish of whether an audio clip exists of alleged discussions to destabilise his leadership through constant water cuts in the city.
Morero spoke on Friday during a media briefing at which he gave an update on the status of the water supply in Johannesburg. This follows water supply outages experienced in several areas in the city.
The Star newspaper reported this week about an audio clip recorded in a clandestine meeting where two MMCs, two ANC officials and a Rand Water official were allegedly discussing strategies on destabilising Morero's leadership, by allegedly “shutting down water flow in Johannesburg as long as possible”. It was suggested the water cuts that have plagued the city could have been orchestrated to portray the mayor as unfit to secure adequate water supply for residents.
“We note that this ploy is said to be part of a political scheme to render the city ungovernable and to usurp the mayor of his authority. I don't have the recordings but it was important for the executive mayor’s office to respond because these are the serious allegations that have gone through to the media,” Morero said.
He said he is not in possession of the audio recording, but said he had to involve law enforcement agencies to investigate whether the recording existed.
He added that the nature of the allegations boiled down to “treason”, as any sabotage would be interfering with a national key point.
“Therefore it requires the attention of law enforcement agencies, whether it is true or not it is something else. Competent institutions, which are law enforcement agencies, have to confirm whether these things are there or not,” he said.
Morero said the water status has normalised considerably compared to last week Friday and there may be a few areas that may still be experiencing no water, but this could be due to airlocks that their teams on the ground were attending.
He said the system was affected by the three days of incidents — a power failure that had affected Eikenhof pump station on February 10, followed by power failures on February 11 and 12 which had affected Zwartkopjes and Eikenhof pump stations.
Morero said Johannesburg Water had observed and monitored significant progress on the overall recovery of systems affected recently which included power failures that had affected pumping capacity to many reservoirs and towers across the city.
“Technical interventions by both Rand Water and Johannesburg Water technical teams are working hard to contribute efforts to progressively realise recovery and to improve the affected reservoirs and towers to boost supply and sustain capacity,” he said.
He said the entity has also been implementing a water supply reduction/throttling since November 8 last year which is done on a rotational basis.
“There is now an increased list of restricted sites, which includes halting pumping to towers. This is done to manage the high consumption and support recovery of the systems.
“Customers are warned not to abuse water as this can lead to declaring Level 2 water restrictions. It has been raining heavily over the past few days, so it is hoped that customers took the opportunity to harvest rainwater and will continue to harvest as much rainwater as possible if the opportunity presents itself,” he said.
He indicated his office has engaged Johannesburg Water management about the reported alleged corruption related to a R263m water tanker case currently before the courts and their internal auditors are conducting an investigation.
TimesLIVE
Joburg mayor asks authorities to probe whether 'sabotage' audio clip exists
Image: THAPELO MOREBUDI
Johannesburg mayor Dada Morero said he has roped in law enforcement agencies to establish of whether an audio clip exists of alleged discussions to destabilise his leadership through constant water cuts in the city.
Morero spoke on Friday during a media briefing at which he gave an update on the status of the water supply in Johannesburg. This follows water supply outages experienced in several areas in the city.
The Star newspaper reported this week about an audio clip recorded in a clandestine meeting where two MMCs, two ANC officials and a Rand Water official were allegedly discussing strategies on destabilising Morero's leadership, by allegedly “shutting down water flow in Johannesburg as long as possible”. It was suggested the water cuts that have plagued the city could have been orchestrated to portray the mayor as unfit to secure adequate water supply for residents.
“We note that this ploy is said to be part of a political scheme to render the city ungovernable and to usurp the mayor of his authority. I don't have the recordings but it was important for the executive mayor’s office to respond because these are the serious allegations that have gone through to the media,” Morero said.
He said he is not in possession of the audio recording, but said he had to involve law enforcement agencies to investigate whether the recording existed.
He added that the nature of the allegations boiled down to “treason”, as any sabotage would be interfering with a national key point.
“Therefore it requires the attention of law enforcement agencies, whether it is true or not it is something else. Competent institutions, which are law enforcement agencies, have to confirm whether these things are there or not,” he said.
Morero said the water status has normalised considerably compared to last week Friday and there may be a few areas that may still be experiencing no water, but this could be due to airlocks that their teams on the ground were attending.
He said the system was affected by the three days of incidents — a power failure that had affected Eikenhof pump station on February 10, followed by power failures on February 11 and 12 which had affected Zwartkopjes and Eikenhof pump stations.
Morero said Johannesburg Water had observed and monitored significant progress on the overall recovery of systems affected recently which included power failures that had affected pumping capacity to many reservoirs and towers across the city.
“Technical interventions by both Rand Water and Johannesburg Water technical teams are working hard to contribute efforts to progressively realise recovery and to improve the affected reservoirs and towers to boost supply and sustain capacity,” he said.
He said the entity has also been implementing a water supply reduction/throttling since November 8 last year which is done on a rotational basis.
“There is now an increased list of restricted sites, which includes halting pumping to towers. This is done to manage the high consumption and support recovery of the systems.
“Customers are warned not to abuse water as this can lead to declaring Level 2 water restrictions. It has been raining heavily over the past few days, so it is hoped that customers took the opportunity to harvest rainwater and will continue to harvest as much rainwater as possible if the opportunity presents itself,” he said.
He indicated his office has engaged Johannesburg Water management about the reported alleged corruption related to a R263m water tanker case currently before the courts and their internal auditors are conducting an investigation.
TimesLIVE
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