The irony of the words “please use water sparingly” did not go down well with residents who had, and still are suffering the water outrage that has affected Matjhabeng since Friday morning.
The no water situation affected each and every town and hamlet in Matjhabeng, from Odendaalsrus through to Ventersburg.
When Bloem Water asked residents to be patient, they lashed out on Facebook. “How much patience? It’s two days no water! What about washing clothes, babies washing, using the toilet, cooking food and washing dishes and bathing,” wrote Thea Londt on Facebook on Saturday.
The water outage followed the flooding and destruction experienced after the thunderstorms, accompanied by hail and strong winds on Thursday night.
Add to this loadshedding catastrophes where suburbs like Bedelia were without electricity from 22:00 on Thursday night, when scheduled loadshedding started, to 10:00 (12 hours later) on Friday morning. This was because of cable theft at the substation feeding these areas.
The latest water shedding fiasco is actually more than a year old, and happens virtually every month when the scheduled chemicals to cleanse the water are not delivered on time. This always results in more than a week without water for large sections of the municipality.
On Friday Bloem Water issued a statement informing the residents of the water outage.They stated that they had had to stop the Balkfontein plant because of there being no chemicals. The chemical delivery was expected on Friday, and then Saturday but eventually arrived on Sunday.
By the time the chemicals were delivered (either Saturday or Sunday) all of the reservoirs had run dry, and first had to start filling before the pumps could be activated. Low lying areas started getting water late on Sunday evening.
On Monday morning the water levels at Brabant (Hennenman), and Ventersburg were still 0% and the pumps at Brabant and Ventersburg could not be activated. This caused a flurry of words and emotions when residents in Riebeeckstad, Hennenman and Ventersburg realised they might only see water by Thursday this week, or even Saturday based on past experiences in this recurring nightmare.
Truia Coetzer wrote that the water situation will repeat itself again next month. “It’s every month’s thing around the 10th of the month. Can someone with brains please pay the bill now and order the chemicals now, so we don’t have a repeat of this recurring situation next month.”
