Pretoria - Tensions have been reduced in Olievenhoutbosch with some parts of the area receiving water after a three-day outage that resulted in chaos.
By yesterday afternoon, 60% of water had been restored in the area as the City of Tshwane worked to restore the remaining 40%, according to ward 106 councillor Kenny Masha.
Extensions 23, 24, 25 and the shopping centre’s water had not yet been restored.
Yesterday, we reported thousands of people had 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 residents’ taps in the area since Saturday.
There were also reports of violence, with water trucks being hijacked and people fighting for places in line.
However, Masha yesterday said water had been sent to the township, defusing tensions in the area.
“Sixty percent of water was restored in parts of the neighbourhood on Monday night. Although the pressure was a bit low, at least there was water.
“I started receiving reports from community members that water was coming out on Monday night after three days without water,” Masha said.
He said the lines had significantly reduced and community members were helping each other to get water.
“Those that don’t have water can go to their next-door neighbours to ask for water,” he said.
Masha called on the Department of Water and Sanitation to intervene in water matters in the area.
“We really are requesting the intervention of the national government to make sure there are enough trucks deployed to the area when there is an outage.
“The City of Tshwane just did not send enough trucks, which caused people to fight over water. This has to be avoided because anything could have happened. People could have died,” he said.
City of Tshwane spokesperson Lindela Mashigo did not answer his phone but had promised to call back. However, at the time of going to print he had not responded.
But the metro had earlier said it had observed an improvement in most of the reservoirs that were affected over the weekend, such as the Garsfontein and Laudium reservoirs, which 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,” Mashigo said.
“The city wishes to reiterate its call to its customers to drastically reduce water consumption.”
He said the city’s technical team was engaging with Rand Water for intervention so that water supply could be restored to all affected areas.
He added the municipality had been experiencing challenges of inconsistent water supply following a number of power failures and trips experienced at Rand Water’s Vereeniging and Zuikerbosch water treatment plants as well as at the Palmiet, Eikenhof and Mapleton booster pumping stations, last month.
Pretoria News