‘The current situation cannot entirely be interpreted as a permanent solution. What the City of Johannesburg needs is to embark on a wide-scale audit of our 12 500 pipelines,’ says the city's first citizen.
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KABELO GWAMANDA: We have been able to successfully restore water, we’re just finalising an issue with a burst pipe in the Linden area. But 99% of the challenge has been fixed. However, the current situation cannot entirely be interpreted as a permanent solution. What the City of Johannesburg needs is to embark on a wide-scale audit of our 12 500 pipelines, so that we can be able to replace what needs to be replaced and to refurbish what needs to be refurbished. So it’s an ongoing process.
KABELO GWAMANDA: So over the past couple of weeks, I have been engaging with other spheres of government, but Johannesburg Water has also been engaged in an engagement with National Treasury so that we can establish a PPP model that does not take the lengthy process in which it ordinarily does. National Treasury is going to assist in us reducing the timeframes.
So I think the bulk of our budget was directed to new infrastructure, especially in disadvantaged communities or black and previously disadvantaged communities that needed to have the same access. KABELO GWAMANDA: The issue here is access to water and the disruption that had occurred. As a city, we understand that it can’t be tolerated that communities would go on without water for several days at a time. Although we understood what the contributing factors were and we had a plan in place that had been initiated to remedy the situation, the challenge in the main was the delay in the restoration of water.
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