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6 June 2019 – For immediate release

This morning the Municipality was made aware of a failure at the James Kleynhans Water Treatment Works and that water from the Bothas Hill Resrvoir was drained into the system.  Malicious intent is suspected in both cases.

The draining of Botha’s Hill reservoir resulted in no water being available to the high lying areas in the East .  The pump failure at James Kleynhans has resulted in a decrease in the output of the plant to approximately 5 megalitres a day, less than half of the 13 megalitres it was previously providing.

Firstly, the Municipality wishes to state unequivocally that any act of sabotage is not only immoral but is a criminal matter and we will seek the harshest possible penalty for those found guilty of such an offence. We are currently investigating this incident together with a special team from SAPS, and are putting further plans in place to vigorously protect our City’s water supply together with SAPS and private security contractors.

We are working, together with Amatola Water and MBB Engineering, to resolve the drop in capacity as a matter of urgency. That work should be completed within 48 hours and in that period we urge residents to further restrict the amount of water they use so that the supply we have can reach as many households as possible. Meanwhile we have activated our emergency response plan, and from 12pm – 8pm today water will be delivered to areas affected by any outages. The specific water distribution points are:

We know that this is frustrating for the residents of our City and sets back our efforts to normalize the water distribution in Makhanda. I can only assure residents that our team, together with our partners, are focused on not only remedying the immediate crisis but also on putting measures in place to minimize the risk of it recurring.

Executive Mayor Hon. Cllr Mzukisi Mpahlwa.