People collect water from a tanker because reservoirs supplying areas like Laudium and Atteridgeville are critically low. Picture: Thobile Mathonsi/African News Agency (ANA)
Pretoria - Inconsistency in water supply is causing frustration among residents living in high-lying areas in the west and north of Tshwane while some political parties are using the plight to campaign.
Chairperson of Lotus Atteridgeville Saulsville Civic Association (Lasca) Tshepo Mahlangu said water was only becoming available when it was not needed in the west of Pretoria.
He said this a couple of minutes after water supply was interrupted again in parts of Atteridgeville and surrounding areas while the City of Tshwane has been battling to have Rand Water restore normal water pressure.
High-lying areas in the west of the City like Saulsville, Lotus Gardens, Laudium and some areas in the north of Tshwane like Soshanguve have been hardest hit by the interruptions.
This started when Rand Water, who supply most of the water in Tshwane, had to repair a major pipeline, but after that the water pressure could not be restored to normality.
To make matters worse, Eskom had a power failure at its Snowden High Voltage substation at the weekend which caused failure at the Rand Water Zuikerbosch Water Treatment Plant. This plant supplies water to Tshwane and five other municipalities in Gauteng.
Mahlangu said: "What frustrates us is that this water comes back during the day when people are at work but by the time they return from work there is no water again. From there it will come back again when they are asleep but when they wake-up it is gone again.
"Our people are tired now and somebody just has to do the right thing somewhere. What then irritates us is people coming here wearing political regalia and playing politics and asking people to vote for them.
"We ended up swearing at some ANC supporters who were giving us water and telling us to vote. This is not the time and the place. Even if we say we will vote that is still a decision we will make on November 1 when it is just us and the ballot."
City chief of staff Jordan Griffiths said fundamentally the issue was that Rand Water was unable to sustain the adequate pressure that was needed to supply water into our high-lying reservoirs since they repaired a pipeline supplying Tshwane but failed to restore the pressure to what it was.
He said this affected the reservoirs in Mnandi, Atteridgeville, Laudium and Soshanguve who could not fill-up due to the decrease in water pressure, which ultimately affected areas as far as Olievenhoutbosch and Soshanguve.
He said things have been stabilising gradually as Rand Water had been sustaining a level of adequate water pressure but obviously the interruption caused by a failure in one of Eskom's substations affected the progress.
Pretoria News