Cape Town - The water and sanitation directorate has suffered a double blow after vandalism to its water supply network in the Wallacedene, Bloekombos, De Novo and Kraaifontein areas in the early hours of Thursday and Friday last week.
The City said that last Thursday, February 16, vandals damaged the electricity supply to the pump station and control mechanism. On Friday, in another attack, they ruined the telemetry of the water supply network at the Bloekombos and De Novo reservoirs.
“The vandalised installations and equipment are critical to the control and operations of the water supply to and from the reservoirs that supply drinking water to these areas.
“The vandalism directly interferes with management of a sustained water supply in the reticulation network. As such it places the entire system under severe risk,” the City said.
Acting Mayco member for water and sanitation Siseko Mbandezi said: “These acts of vandalism are very costly to remedy and are very disruptive to the day-to-day operations of the water and sanitation directorate.
“Usually, operational staff can monitor and adjust the flow and supply of water via the technology that was available at these locations, but now they have to physically visit these installations on an hourly basis to make adjustments, which otherwise would have been made remotely.
“This ties up our manpower unnecessarily as they would have been attending to other service related aspects of our operations. This completely defeats the objective of introducing technology to enhance service delivery,” said Mbandezi.
He asked people who live in the affected areas to play an active role because the vandalism will have a direct impact on them.
“We call on the communities in these areas to play an active part in protecting this critical water supply infrastructure because it is the lifeblood of their communities. It will have direct implications on them every time that it is vandalised.
“They can do so by reporting the perpetrators of these criminal activities and in so doing eliminate the risks of undue water supply disruptions that could last for days at a time.”
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