This is according to DA councillor Roussow Botes, who says after almost an entire day without water on Monday, areas such as Pellissier are still without water. Botes says DA councillors have been receiving hundreds of phone calls from Mangaung residents pleading for help regarding water outages. Certain parts of the metro have been severely affected and have been without water for more than ten days.

The spokesperson for the Mangaung Metro Municipality, Qondile Khedama, says water has been restored to most areas, but only a few affected areas haven't received water because of high demand and a pipeline that had to be filled. 

The municipality said in a statement that whilst working on the debris and sand coming into the water treatment plant, the rain continued and flooded the raw water pump station, which resulted in the plan to stop the pump as an emergency, in order to remove the water inside the pump station. This has affected the process of raw water purification.

Botes further says the DA Mangaung Caucus will lay charges at the Human Rights Commission regarding the service delivery crises in the Mangaung Metro Municipality.

Khedama says: “The process of filling the reservoirs and the pipeline requires extensive work and was delayed by the heavy rainfall at the catchment. The city will also be adding more Jojo tanks to the affected areas,” says Khedama.

"A DA Mangaung caucus delegation on Monday provided recommendations to manage the crisis in the short term, to the Acting General Manager, the Executive Mayor, Deputy Executive Mayor, and the Acting City manager," says Botes.

The DA caucus made the following recommendations:

- With no water tankers available to the communities, water should be pumped from the northern pump station to the southern areas.

- For this to work, a water-shedding schedule has to be implemented for the entire Mangaung Metro. Because of this water crisis, all residents of Mangaung will have to use water sparingly to make sure that all consumers receive water for some part of the day.

 - The Metro’s Communications Department and relevant officials must urgently communicate this water-shedding schedule to communities, as well as media houses.

- A working plan for all affected schools, old age homes, and hospitals must be implemented.

OFM News