Joburg water crisis could degenerate into health disaster, DA councillor warns
|Published
The Democratic Alliance in Joburg has raised alarm over the water crisis bedevilling South Africa’s heavily populated economic heartbeat, Johannesburg, warning that the city could soon face pandemics linked to water scarcity.
Speaking to IOL, DA Councillor Belinda Kayser-Echeozonjoku, who is the Johannesburg caucus leader said clinics in the city are at times shutting their doors due to no access to water.
“Water is a basic human right. If not attended to, this could lead to health issues because clinics are closing because of no water, without telling patients alternative clinics to go to,” said Kayser-Echeozonjoku.
“This is a catastrophe if old age homes are without water for nine days, no tankers and Joburg Water has been asked three times.”
On Monday, Kayser-Echeozonjoku said a meeting was held, which was attended by Joburg Mayor Kabelo Gwamanda as anger continues to grow in the city, over the sporadic water supply.
Some of parts of Joburg, such as Blairgowrie and Linden, have been without water for over a week due to an outage caused by a lightning strike.
“The DA in the meeting today called for the executive mayor to call a joint meeting with councillors that include Joburg Water, City Power and Rand Water. There are issues being raised and the city seems to be meeting with other stakeholders, but they seem to still be working in silos,” she said.
The DA in Joburg is urging City of Joburg to establish a crisis hotline as intervention in the crisis.
“The city needs to communicate with councillors where the water tanker locations are. Clinics must get water. Water losses should not be taken for granted. The city should establish a crisis management line where residents and councillors can contact the crisis line,” she said.
She also appealed to Joburg to establish a crisis line for all patients who were turned away from clinics due to lack of water.
“We are having serious concerns regarding the water outages.
“Several areas are not getting serviced and not getting tankers. Joburg Water had advised councillors that the backlog of repairs is as result of underfunding,” she said.
“Infrastructure is already very old, it's important for the city to ensure that sufficient budget is allocated to repairs and maintenance, with emphasis on protection of the water infrastructure as well, which does not seem to take priority.
“The DA has requested an engagement with the MMC for finance to discuss some of these concerns and it was unfortunately ignored,” said Kayser-Echeozonjoku.
Earlier on Monday, IOL reported that frustrated residents of Joburg have entered a second agonising week without water supply, a problem which was triggered by a lightning strike at the Eikenhof pump station more than a week ago.
City Power, Joburg’s power utility, reported a week ago that a lightning strike had hit its transformer, which impacted the power supply to Rand Water's Eikenhof system. The Eikenhof supplies the vital liquid to areas including greater Soweto, Roodepoort, Hursthill, Crosby and Brixton in Joburg.
WaterCAN, a leading civil society organisation dedicated to ensuring access to clean and safe water, has expressed “alarm” that the authorities in Joburg are struggling to resolve the dire water supply situation.
In an interview with IOL, Dr Ferrial Adam, executive manager of WaterCAN said the City of Joburg must not “play politics” around the supply of water.
“The water tanks being provided are not the solution. We need to figure out because we do not know how much government is spending on a water tank per day, we would love to have that information,” she said.
Last week, IOL reported that Johannesburg Water announced that there was some progress on systems that were affected by the City Power outage at Rand Water’s Eikenhof pump station.
This is after taps in most of the suburbs and township in Johannesburg were left dry, with no water running out of taps since about Sunday in some areas.
In a statement, the water utility said despite the marginal progress at the pump station, complete recovery was projected to take a week at most.
It said developments were seen in areas like Soweto, Brixton, Crosby and Hursthill, including some parts of Roodepoort.
In Soweto, the Chiawelo reservoir, Doornkop West, Power Park, Jabulani, Diepkloof, Orlando East and Meadowlands reservoirs, had reportedly improved, but poor pressure may still be expected in the supply zone.
Randburg and other parts of Roodepoort were reported to be critically low.
IOL