The City of Tshwane has been working with the final communities affected by the water outage in Pretoria East throughout the weekend. I have been out on-site at reservoirs and pump stations with officials and affected community members.
As of this morning, I can confirm that almost all areas have water restored and our reservoirs have sufficient supply to maintain provision to most areas. However, we are aware of a few remaining estates that continue to experience water challenges and we are working with management and ward councillors to resolve these.
This extended outage was unprecedented as we have never had a situation where the supply from Rand Water was completely shut down for over three days. Previously, we have had partial supply issues or the supply outages had been shorter.
While we continue to work with Mooikloof Estate, Tygervalley Country Estate and Leeuwenhof Estate to restore water to these final areas, we are also focusing on taking actions to prepare for and hopefully mitigate or prevent future outages.
We are looking at the functioning of various pump stations in areas like Mooikloof and Carina to boost the resilience of our system. Where a fix is needed, we are prioritising that. Where an upgrade is needed, we are looking at securing the budget to enable such. Within our system we are looking at areas we can strengthen to maximise our ability to use the existing supply we have.
The reality is that the majority of Tshwane’s water is supplied by Rand Water, and we are looking to strengthen our relationship and communication with them. We need an open and transparent line of active communication so that we can best respond to any future challenges.
To this effect, I already met with Mr David Mahlobo, Deputy Minister of Water and Sanitation, last week Friday on-site at Rand Water’s reservoirs to sensitise the national government about this situation. I must thank the Deputy Minister for coming on short notice and for his proactive stance on this issue.