Pretoria - Water was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back for residents of Olievenhoutbosch.
Since the weekend, thousands of people have been lining up at points where water trucks were deployed to fill buckets for drinking, cooking and sanitation.
There has been no running water in the taps in the area since Saturday, with the City of Tshwane citing power outages as the reason.
At the RDP houses, meanwhile, residents are still without water more than six years after the project was built, fuelling the frustration.
Speaking to the Pretoria News yesterday, ward 106 councillor Kenny Masha said the situation was getting worse because of criminal elements creeping in at the water stations. He said a water truck had been hijacked.
There were also rumours of residents of Olievenhoutbosch “raiding” fire hydrants in Mnandi AH since Sunday, but Masha could not confirm that.
“Thousands of people have been lining up since morning and the chaos started after some people started fighting to be in the front of the line.
“A truck was also hijacked by opportunists who took it to their area to sell the water to the people. Police have been deployed and we are trying to keep the situation calm,” Masha said.
He said he had been in talks with the city to defuse the situation by providing more trucks or fix the water problem.
“We have been engaging the City of Tshwane about the water crisis and they have not been communicating properly with us. They only got back to me yesterday afternoon saying that they were still investigating what could have gone wrong. But what I can see is that the city has no contingency plans in place to solve this crisis.
“We were hoping that by this morning (Monday) we would have running water in our taps but that has not happened,” Masha said.
By yesterday afternoon an estimated 3 000 residents were lining up to get water at eight stations.
“There are not enough trucks for all our people. The city needs to deploy more trucks because more and more people keep coming and they are now on my neck because they want answers and I don’t have them,” he said.
Yesterday afternoon, the City of Tshwane said it observed an improvement in most of the reservoirs that were affected over the weekend, such as the Garsfontein and Laudium reservoirs that were empty. It said the reservoirs had recovered to 54% and 90%, respectively.
“However, some of the areas that remain affected include the Centurion area, as well as new reservoirs, namely Mooikloof, Klapperkop, Mnandi and Lotus Gardens reservoirs, which are at critically low levels or empty,” spokesperson Lindela Mashigo said in a statement. The city wishes to reiterate its clarion call to its customers to drastically reduce water consumption.
“Meanwhile, the city’s technical team is engaging with Rand Water for intervention so that water supply can be restored to all affected areas.”
He said the City of Tshwane had been experiencing challenges of inconsistent water supply following a number of power failures and trips experienced during the month of June at Rand Water’s Vereeniging and Zuikerbosch water treatment plants as well as at the Palmiet, Eikenhof and Mapleton booster pumping stations.
“The utility’s system remains impacted and is struggling to recover. Reduction of water consumption will enable the system to stabilise and recover. The affected regions are 1, 2, 3,4 and parts of 5. Water tankers will be deployed to the areas experiencing challenges of water supply.
“Residents are reminded and urged to use water wisely and sparingly. Should residents fail to heed this call, the current water outages will be prolonged, resulting in more areas being affected.
“The city apologises for the inconvenience that may be encountered.”