Johannesburg – A water crisis has affected huge parts of Johannesburg and hospitals especially, are feeling the effects.
Gift of the Givers have stepped up and are assisting Rahima Mother and Child Hospital in Coronationville by drilling for water, which started today
The water outages are said to be a result of outages and below optimum inflow of water into the system and power failures at the Eikenhof substation.
But residents of Westbury, Newclare, Coronationville, and Newlands say the problem has been persisting for the last year – with either no water for days on end or very low pressure that makes it impossible to have a proper bath or to do house chores.
“What’s frustrating is that there is no communication. There is some construction work going on where we see they are laying pipes underground. It has disrupted our livelihoods for the longest time, but the interruption with water supply is infuriating. We are not animals, we are people,” said Zaheer Opperman, a resident of Newclare.
Another resident, Noeroeneza, says while her neighbours have water, she has had low pressure for the last month.
“It runs so slow that we can’t even fill our toilet or water bottle. This is unacceptable considering we are living in a pandemic. And when we call the authorities in charge, we get no help,” she said.
Gift of the Givers has also donated bottled water, portable toilets and offered assistance to augment the water tankers arriving daily to the hospitals, including Helen Joseph Hospital which was also hugely affected.
“The crisis couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time with rapidly rising Covid-19 numbers in the third wave in Gauteng, Rahima Moosa being one of the feeder hospitals for the temporarily shut Charlotte Maxeke Hospital, healthcare workers trying to ‘catch up’ with non-Covid conditions between the second and third wave and add to that a desperate community in the vicinity of the hospital thronging to the hospital in search of drinking water, clearly exacerbating Covid-19 risk,” Gift of the Givers founder Imtiaz Sooliman said.
The organisation’s geologist, Dr Gideon Groenewald, identified the drilling site, assessing existing defunct boreholes to resuscitate
“The boreholes will then be pumping water directly into the hospital infrastructure using booster pumps and setting up taps outside the hospital for community usage once the water has been tested and approved for human consumption,” said Sooliman.
The organisation has called for donations of bottled water while the drilling is underway.
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