The Municipality has been recently experiencing recurring water interruptions and/or outages resulting into water pressure problems affecting a number of areas in Grahamstown West.  This is as a result of a pipe burst in African Street on Monday evening, the 10th of August 2009.

 It is suspected that whilst attending to the problem municipal officials closed water valves forgot to open them.  The burst pipe has caused a loss of water resulting in low levels of water at an Intermediate Reservoir which draws water from Waainek and consequently the water pressure was reduced and resulted in water outages. 

Contingency measures were put in place to draw water from other reservoirs to fill up Waainek Reservoir.  As a result the Grahamstown East areas were also affected negatively.  However, water is now available in Grahamstown East and arrangements are currently underway to draw water directly from Waainek.  It is anticipated that water will be available by 19:00 in Grahamstown West.  Alternative arrangements have since been made to ferry water by means of water trucks to the affected areas.

It is regretted that prior notification could not be given to residents.  An incident management and communication protocol is being looked at as a mechanism of informing the public timeously under similar circumstances.  Where it suspected that this situation was attributed to dereliction of duty appropriate action will be taken against those affected.  The issue of lack of regular supervision of maintenance and monitoring is being addressed so as to avoid a similar situation in the future.

On behalf of the Municipality, I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused.

Ms NL Baart 
MUNICIPAL MANAGER