Johannesburg - The water crisis in Joburg is temporarily over. Joburg Water said on Sunday that the heavy rains during the past week have offered some relief, but level 2 restrictions are still in place and that Joburg residents should be using water sparingly.
“The water reservoirs are currently fine, but we are now monitoring residents' behaviour again with the hot weather. We encourage people to continue using water sparingly as we do not expect heavy rains in the following months,” Joburg Water spokesman Hilgard Mattews said.
In the meantime, following The Star’s campaign urging people to report bursts and leaks, this has shown that these problems go unresolved for days, if not weeks at a time.
Residents have been calling and e-mailing about complaints of thousands of litres of water spewing out of leaks and broken pipes.
Alison Munro said there have been numerous leaks in Bez Valley which have been running for months.
“I have personally reported these on more than one occasion over several months to no avail,” she said.
Jack Hickman from a retirement village in Randburg said residents were faced with a lack of interest shown to their plea to resolve a problem of a leak outside their premises.
“We have, on numerous occasions, reported this and received their so-called reference numbers and still nothing happens. This leak has been ongoing since January 2015.
“Our employees tried to divert water from the tar road into the veld to prevent damage to the road way,” he said.
Matthews said repairs were being done as quickly as possible with teams on standby to do the repairs.
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The Star