Johannesburg’s water response plan: Where has Mayor Morero fallen short?

The opposition party in the Johannesburg city council has expressed doubts about the city’s progress in addressing the water crisis.

Mayor Dada Morero made several commitments in November when he outlined his water response plan to keep the taps flowing.

Water supply has remained erratic throughout the city, and Democratic Alliance (DA) caucus leader Belinda Kayser-Echeozonjoku suggests the situation has worsened since the Mayor’s earlier announcement.

Reservoirs and towers critically low

Johannesburg Water has been throttling supply since early November, and the entity posts daily updates showing multiple towers at critically low levels at any given time.

The worst-hit areas can go weeks without a water supply, with the mayor noting over the weekend that roughly 65 reservoirs and towers had been adversely affected in recent weeks.  

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Morero visited several key infrastructure points last week and assured that teams were working to stabilise the affected systems.

“Technical interventions by both Rand Water and Johannesburg Water technical teams are working respectively to sustain recovery and to improve the affected reservoirs and towers to boost supply and build capacity,” stated Morero on Saturday.

“Following our visits yesterday to Berea and Eikenhof reservoirs, we committed to providing regular updates and progress reports on the systems in the affected areas,” he added.

Interventions falling short

The mayor said in November that water and sewer leaks would be addressed within 48 hours, leak detection would be addressed quicker, and there would be an increase in the number of water trucks.

“The commitments made by the [mayor], alongside Joburg Water, are not worth the paper they are written on,” stated Kayser-Echeozonjoku.

The DA Johannesburg leader relayed that burst pipes and sewer leaks were still going days without being addressed and that councillors were fetching water tankers from depots themselves after having requests delayed for days.

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Citing protests from frustrated residents and the recent temporary closing of both the Constitutional Court and Johannesburg High Court, Kayser-Echeozonjoku said the time for talk shops had passed.

The DA believes the situation should be escalated to the national legislature, calling for a full parliamentary inquiry.

“We are looking at all options to hold the City of Joburg accountable. They have bungled the handling of this water crisis, and it cannot be allowed to continue,” stated Kayser-Echeozonjoku.

Mayor Morero’s office was contacted for comment on Tuesday morning, and a response will be added once it is forthcoming.

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