Thembinkosi Myalato says he's treating as an emergency a water outage in the north-western side of town.
Thembinkosi Myalato says he's treating as an emergency a water outage in the north-western side of town.
Residents of the army base and Cradock Heights have been without water for more than two weeks and, furious at what they say is discrimination, residents in the area confronted the acting municipal manager this week.
Saying the water outage was only the latest of many over the years, they handed him a petition representing more than 50 residents.
"This problem has been going on for over five years. We are not happy with service delivery regarding this issue," said Enocent Msindo, one of a group of six appointed to meet Myalato on Tuesday.
The Cradock Heights residents claim their water gets deliberately cut off and have demanded proper explanations.
Msindo said the problem of low pressure had persisted since the founding of Cradock Heights. He said their frustration was because they have not been given a reasonable explanation, and that no one in the office seemed to know what the real problem was.
The residents who can afford them rely on water tanks, which they say run dry at times and they say the municipality has offered no assistance.
In the petition they demanded that water supply be restored in their residential area immediately; that there be a clear and unambiguous statement from the relevant office clarifying the real problem; assurance that this discriminatory service provision would not be repeated in the future; and to alternatively call for a meeting with the relevant officials to address the issue to the residents' satisfaction.
When the residents arrived at the city hall on Tuesday he took them to his office, where he explained the cause of the low pressure, drawing diagrams on the board to illustrate why the pressure is low when they do have water.
Myalato said the water pressure was lower in Cradock Heights because the pressure is lowered because of the longer route it takes to get to the residents' homes. He also said residents of the area did not have their own intermediate water storage tank, which means they get their water directly from Waainek.
He explained that Waainek has a capacity of 4.4 megalitres and that once the reservoir there gets to below 3.7 megalitres they do not get water.
He agreed that this should not be the case, explaining that there was a pipe which was not connected properly and needed to be attended to. To improve the situation in the interim he said the municipality needed to install a booster pump, which costs about R700 000, and an elevated tank, which costs about R600 000.
He said they were treating the situation as an emergency and instructions to fit two T-junctions to the disconnected pipe had been given to the service provider, adding that he was confident progress would be visible within a week.
He emphasised that he understood their frustrations and said the army base, Tantyi and Joza were facing similar problems.
