The Democratic Alliance in Gauteng will engage Joburg Water to urgently restore water in Hursthill 1 and 2 and Honeydew reservoirs.
These communities have been without water for more than a week, causing great distress among the residents.
Councillors in these areas have been raising concerns about the poor communication from Johannesburg Water regarding this issue and their having to take the blame from residents for the water utility’s failure, and still communication from Joburg Water is silent while they cannot decide on a course of action to fix the problem.
The Councillors have requested water tankers and JoJo tanks to be provided in the interim but have received no response from Johannesburg Water. As a result, residents continue to go day by day without water.
The Eikenhof reservoir system feeds Hursthill and Southhills reservoirs, as well as the West and Northwest of Johannesburg which are continually experiencing water outages.
The City of Johannesburg should by now be aware of the recurring problems in these areas and prioritise them for capital injection in budget allocation to fix the problem. Instead of blaming residents for using too much water; Joburg Water and the City must recognise that the problem is that 43% of all water is lost due to system failures as a result of disinvestment.
It cannot be that the constitutional rights of residents to have access to uninterrupted water supply are trampled upon.
The Democratic Alliance will add this issue on the already opened case with the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) for investigation as this has become an untenable situation. Johannesburg Water needs to secure funding for increased capacity at the problematic Hursthill and Southills reservoirs and towers, problem areas that have been identified as such since 2017. There is clearly a supply and demand issue that needs urgent intervention as Eikenhof, which also supplies water to the northwest of Johannesburg and Honeydew. This will ensure that Hursthill and the surrounding areas are prioritised as problem areas.
The Mayor of Johannesburg, Dada Morero, needs to make a serious effort to find the budget for Johannesburg Water to do what is expected of them and stop blaming residents.
Furthermore, we will continue to engage Johannesburg Water to ascertain the extent of the problem and the timelines as to when water will be restored and continue to pressure them to provide water tankers in areas affected by water outages. Enough is Enough.