Bedfordview taps dry for 16 days as Jojo tanks cover a quarter of a million people
Residents say the water board and the municipality are blaming each other while businesses cut staff hours and households pay for their own boreholes.
Residents of Desert View in Bedfordview have been without water for 16 days this month, with the taps dry from 1 October to 24 October, eNCA (YouTube) reported. The same households also went without water on 29 and 30 September.
The suburb sits under a municipality the residents describe as failing them, and the people who spoke to eNCA did not hold back. One resident said there is no reason the country cannot provide water for its citizens, pointing out that government has collected 2 trillion rand in taxes. “Something is chronically wrong,” the resident said, asking why the country’s engineers, project managers and artisans are not being used to fix the supply.
Another resident described the daily routine: you wake up, you go to your tap, and it is dry. Many households have drilled boreholes, but residents ask why they should carry that expense themselves when electricity and other services are also under strain.
The residents laid the blame at the door of a municipality they called corrupt, and said they have little leverage because the water board and the council blame each other. Rand Water blames the municipality, the resident said, and the municipality blames Rand Water. The resident also raised the coupling of bills, saying electricity is cut off when the water bill is not paid, which in their view takes pressure off the water board to perform.
The municipality has supplied Jojo tanks, but residents say there are only four or five for an area of a quarter of a million people. They said there is no contingency plan, and that while the primary payers association and ward councillors have been in contact with the authorities, the blame has simply moved between institutions.
The dry taps are hitting livelihoods. A local business owner told eNCA the crisis is affecting staff because the interruptions come every week, and without work there is no money to pay wages. Staff who are not paid, the owner said, cannot afford to buy food.
Residents said they understand there are complexities behind the failure, but want to know what the authorities plan to do going forward.
