City of Joburg working to pump water back into dry taps, says MMC

Johannesburg MMC for Environment and Infrastructure Jack Sekwaila said the city is working closely with two major water utilities to pump water back into dry taps where residents have been affected by outages.

Frustrated residents across Midrand and parts of Johannesburg have been without water for a few days.

This, after supply systems came under severe pressure following emergency repair work and operational disruptions at key Rand Water facilities.

Parts of Tshwane have also been affected.

Sekwaila gave an update while attending to a wall collapse in Doornfontein near the Johannesburg CBD on Monday.

“What is left now is for that particular volume of water to come from the water site to this part of Johannesburg. So, they've done the pumping, their business of pumping.  So, we have requested them to pump even overnight so that we can recover on our site.  

“But I must indicate that the whole entire system from Klipfontein reservoir and Randwater side, it was empty all the way to Midrand, Greater Ivory and so on. So, all those reservoirs were emptied. It means that we might need about a week to recover.”

Sekwaila said residents may still feel the pinch before water systems are fully restored.

“What we normally [do] to recover early, we close the outlets at night so the system can recover because people don’t use water at night.”