Pretoria - Rand Water has dispelled assertions made by Tshwane mayor Cilliers Brink that there was a lack of communication on the part of the water utility, resulting in exacerbating the municipality’s water woes.
Last week Brink called out the water utility, saying information provided by the municipality regarding water shortages and levels was not clear and was communicated at short notice, if at all communicated.
He was speaking at a media briefing following a spate of water outages in the metro in recent weeks, causing chaos for the residents of Tshwane.
Brink further said that there was a problem at Rand Water because information on the part of the utility had since become “less and less” clear.
Brink initially said: “When we try to ask for information, in particular for Rand Water to share water levels with the city, and for them to notify us in advance of maintenance issues, that’s just ignored, so that tells us there is something very wrong at Rand Water.”
However, responding to Pretoria News regarding Brink’s accusations, the water utility’s spokesperson, Makenosi Maroo, shrugged them off saying they were obliged to communicate with the municipalities.
“Please note that Rand Water has signed contract agreements with all its municipal customers, including the City of Tshwane, that compels it to provide them with a 21-day notification prior to the implementation of its maintenance projects.
“This is a standard operating procedure to ensure that municipalities execute contingency measures to mitigate possible water supply shortages during the implementation of the project,” she said.
The city owes Rand Water at least R544 million in arrears for bulk water supply, where they are dependent on the water utility for upward of 70% of its supply.
But Maroo said the fact that the municipality was in arrears with the utility had nothing to do with the outages or planned maintenance.
The utility has recently sent out a notice that they would be embarking on a maintenance project which began on Tuesday night to refurbish pipelines that supply water to most parts of Johannesburg.
“The implementation of this project (A19 and B14) is a planned maintenance to ensure uninterrupted supply of water to Rand Water’s municipal customers,” she said.
Last week Rand Water board chairperson Ramateu Monyokolo said the water utility was in continuous engagement with the city as to how to resolve matters.
He denied that the water utility was at loggerheads with the municipality.
He said: “When there are challenges within any municipality, including Tshwane, our team walks the line to try to resolve the matters. So, we don’t have a problem with Tshwane.
“Throughout these interventions, we have raised the issue of our infrastructure. When we meet with municipalities, they all have a sense of what our infrastructure looks like.
“However, we don’t know what is happening in the infrastructure of all municipalities, so we are an open book, but they are a closed book.”
Pretoria News