Johannesburg is grappling with widespread water outages following a disruptive outage at Rand Water’s Eikenhof pump station last Monday night. The disruption has rippled through various areas, including Soweto, Randburg, Roodepoort, Joburg South, and Joburg Central.
On the 8th of March, Johannesburg Water stated that systems are “progressively recovering”, complete restoration is expected to take several days to a week. Some suburbs still face significant challenges, with residents experiencing little to no water flow from their taps.
Farah Domingo from the Johannesburg Water Crisis Committee commented on the water outages calling the situation a water crisis.
“People have become complacent because we’re still filling up buckets. We’ve gone back 1 400 years where we’re using buckets to do ablution,” she said.
Johannesburg Water stated that bulk suppliers’ systems are interconnected and are therefore able to support one another, which assists in the recovery of all systems. However, they also called on residents to repair leaks on their individual properties “as these also contribute to the high demand on Johannesburg Water systems”.
Domingo responded to Johannesburg Waters’ statement, stating “Instead of blaming the residents – go and see how many water leaks there are in the city. Why don’t they concentrate on fixing those?”
Despite the efforts to alleviate strain on the water supply system, challenges persist, particularly in the realm of healthcare.
Health care facilities and hospitals have been severely affected by the water outages, posing significant challenges for patient care. Rahima Moosa Mother and Child Hospital, Helen Joseph Hospital, Zola Community Health Centre and Dr Yusuf Dadoo Hospital were among the medical facilities grappling with water shortages, according to the Gauteng Health Department.
Although water supply has been restored to three of the affected hospitals, the Zola facility had been dependent on water tankers for two weeks for its water supply.
The provincial Health Department’s spokesperson Motalatale Modiba confirmed in a statement that “Water is now flowing back into the facilities. I’m still just waiting for a report for the Zola Community Health Centre in Soweto… So hopefully by midday later today we should be able to say the system has fully stabilised in terms of our facilities.”
This ordeal serves as a poignant reminder of the vulnerability of essential services as a result of infrastructure disruptions.
