Residents whose water supply has simply stopped flowing over the past week are enraged, saying that the municipality doesn't warn them or care that they cannot wash themselves or cook for their families.
Residents whose water supply has simply stopped flowing over the past week are enraged, saying that the municipality doesn't warn them or care that they cannot wash themselves or cook for their families.
Every morning people in some areas of Grahamstown East have to wake up early to get water from the few nearby working taps on the streets. But some don't even have this opportunity and residents from certain parts of town even reported that they had to go to work this week without having washed themselves.
Gladys Vara of Extension 9 said she was unable to go to work on Monday, as she had no water and couldn't leave home without feeding her children. The kids were hungry. This is terrible because the municipality should have told us earlier about this, she said.
Extension 9 resident Errol Wessels was furious, saying that the municipality is ignoring people. He said that people should've been warned earlier about the problem if the municipality knew that it would happen. The municipality is ignoring us and not just about this water case, Wessels said. Their service delivery is very poor and when people go on strike they call the police.
Another Extension 9 resident who wished that they had been informed of the water cut, Mandla Mthetho said the municipality should've given people notice so that they could store water in buckets.
Nomakhwezi Vutela from Hlalani said that if she didn't happen to have water stored in a bucket at home things could've become very bad, and at least she was able to use a small amount of water to bath in.
During the week attempts made by the Grocott's Mail to get a comment from the municipality were unsuccessful because the relevant officials were not available.
