Tshwane is aware and understands brewing anger among the residents of Soshanguve over the absence of water supply that has persisted for a prolonged period.
Rand Water undertook extensive maintenance of its network on their Mapleton and Palmiet systems last month, which adversely impacted water supply to various parts of Tshwane and other Gauteng metros.
The Soshanguve reservoirs are supplied by Rand Water's Hartebeeshoek Reservoir, which is fed from the Palmiet system.
The Palmiet system underwent comprehensive maintenance on three different dates last month - July 1, 15, 29 - with reduced pumping, culminating in the bulk and distribution systems running empty.
Though the maintenance was completed on Tuesday, but the system is still struggling to recover from that maintenance.
The Soshanguve L Reservoir at the weekend went from 18% to 8.67% . This shows that incoming supply from Rand Water's Hartebeeshoek Reservoir was lost, the City said in a statement.
City technicians are unable to pump to the Soshanguve Block L Tower due to the low level of the Soshanguve Block L Reservoir. The reservoir level has to be above 30% before pumping can commence. This has impacted supply to Block K and Block M.
“It is important to note that Tshwane, like other metros in Gauteng, receives 79% of its bulk water supply from Rand Water's two booster pumping stations, Mapleton and Palmiet,” the statement read.
“Rand Water has to first replenish its own reservoirs fed from the Mapleton and Palmiet systems before they can begin to distribute water to their municipal customers. This process can take up to two weeks for the network to fully recover. This, however, does not mean that water supply will be restored in two weeks' time.
“The city's technician is currently in Mooikloof, which hasn't had water, together with Carina, and will immediately go to Soshanguve after finishing in Pretoria east.
“The team is closely monitoring all the reservoir and tower levels and has deployed water tankers to service the areas that are still without water. Communities are urged to not interfere with the operations of the provision of water through tankers.”
The city said the team is also monitoring the situation in Atteridgeville, Kalafong Heights, Attlyn, Kalafong Hospital, SAPS Academy and Kwaggasrand, which are still without water.
“Water supply has been restored to majority of the areas that had experienced an outage,” it added.