JOHANNESBURG - Residents of Ebony Park say they have been left questioning whether their water crisis is simply a failure of infrastructure, or whether someone is benefiting from it.
For three years, the community has battled an unreliable water supply, with residents saying their taps now run for only a few hours a day.
Residents say water is generally available only from the early morning until around midday, leaving households, schools and businesses scrambling to store enough for the rest of the day.
And they say they are paying twice: Once for municipal water, and again for water they have to buy to get through the shortages.
But Joburg Water rejects the suggestion that the crisis is deliberately created.
The utility says the area’s supply system is under severe pressure and has to be throttled every day to prevent the reservoir from being completely depleted.
“The system that supplies this area, which is President Park Reservoir and Tower, is highly constrained, meaning that we have to do throttling daily in order for us to build capacity," said Joburg Water spokesperson Nombuso Shabalala.
READ: 'We are struggling with population expansion' - Joburg Water
"So we throttle the system every day at 2pm and we open again at 4am. This is so that the reservoir is not completely depleted.”
Joburg Water also points to a growing population and a high number of illegal connections in the Midrand system as additional pressures on the network.
The utility says new infrastructure is planned for the area.
- eNCA’s Bafedile Moerane reports.