Residents from some areas in Grahamstown experienced severe water cuts and shortages since last Friday after several pipes burst around town.
Residents from some areas in Grahamstown experienced severe water cuts and shortages since last Friday after several pipes burst around town.
Makana Deputy Director of water and sewage, Martha Letsoalo confirmed repairs were taking place on at least five burst pipes.
"We are working non-stop to fix the problem," she said, adding that engineers are fixing each burst pipe as and when residents inform the municipality of the problem.
Letsoalo explained that when the team fix a burst pipe the water is turned off.
But since the main water pipe has been turned on they realised that a faulty water valve must be the source of the problem although, it is still not clear exactly where the valve is located.
Infrastructure is disastrous
Director of Technical and Infrastructural Services at Makana Municipality Dabula Njilo, the, said that water losses are "mainly caused by the fact that our infrastructure is very old".
Njilo says losses are monitored by the municipality and recorded on a monthly basis.
"The municipality has established an internal task team to solely look at the causes of water losses and possible solutions," she added.
Earlier this month, the Minister of Water Affairs Buyelwa Sonjica declared Cacadu as well as five other district municipalities as disaster areas due to ailing water and sewerage infrastructure.
“We have a crisis when it comes to water in the Eastern Cape. There is also a lot of water wastage,” she said.
Plans towards renovation
Njilo said that the municipality has conducted a Water Services Master Plan looking at costs to renew the infrastructure and a report has been submitted to the Department of Water Affairs for assistance.
"This audit was completed in March 2009 and an approximate cost of R80-million was revealed," Njilo said.
Sonjica committed the department to provide R140.4-million to assist the provincial government with infrastructure projects and a further R5-million to assist municipalities to roll out rainwater collection tanks.
Janine Hambury, Public Relations Officer for Cacadu District Municipality, said, "A large part of Cacadu Municipality falls in the Karoo which is hard hit by drought."
She said that Cacadu was included in the declaration based largely on this and because of this they will be assisted in dealing with the severe drought.
"A declaration of a state of disaster includes funding to address the matter," she added.
Water frustrations
Letsoalo said that residents of Grahamstown should notify the municipality if they don’t have water, as the fire department is assisting by delivering water to those in need.
Some residents have been without any water whatsoever for more than three days, saying that their personal hygiene has suffered.
Nancy Nyangiwe from Extension 6 in Joza said that since the water cuts on Sunday her family couldn’t cook or even wash their clothes.
"It’s hard when there’s no water and my daughter couldn’t even wash her school uniform." Donnay Oosthuizen, a West Hill resident said angrily since her and her family had been without water since Monday evening.
"It’s very frustrating when there’s no water," Oosthuizen complained.
Business suffers
Linette Dall from Oatlands North said she was forced to use bottled water since Monday. When she enquired at the municipality she was told that there will be water on Wednesday evening.
But by Thursday she was still nothing coming out of her taps and this was also affecting business owners in town.
Michelle Featherstone, a hair stylist from Divine Hair Salon in Bathurst Street, said services such as hair straightening and washing couldn’t be performed.
"We couldn’t wash our clients’ hair without water and that makes work hard for us because it slows business down," she said.
Certain sections of Rhodes University campus also ran dry and to alert students and staff an email was sent which stated that "municipal plumbers are currently working on repairing a burst pipe and that it is not known when the water supply will be restored."
