Pretoria – The City of Tshwane has found out that the prolonged water outage in some parts of Region 7 was as a result of sabotage in Rethabiseng, where a valve was tampered with.
“It has come to the City’s attention that there is a deliberate act of sabotage in Rethabiseng aimed at denying the residents their human right of access to water,” the City said on Saturday.
“This act of sabotage by unscrupulous people to close the Rethabiseng valve resulting in water gushing out in the veld has compounded the challenge for residents of Rethabiseng and Ekangala not having water supply.”
The City said some of the city’s customers in Region 7 were forced to endure a prolonged water outage following complications, which developed when the city’s technicians were fixing a major leak on a main bulk pipeline that supplies Zithobeni Reservoir, last Wednesday.
“Water supply has since been restored to all the low-lying areas, except in the high-lying areas of Ekanganla and Rethabiseng,” the City said.
“The sabotage act of the opening of the valve may be one of the contributing factors to why those two areas still don’t have water.
“Technicians have rushed to the site and closed the Rethabiseng valve tightly and are still inspecting other valves to ensure that they are closed.”
The City said some people tampered with the valve with the devious objective of denying residents access to water.
Tshwane City Manager Johann Mettler condemned the “act of sabotage” and labelled it “evil and barbaric”.
“When you open a valve so that people can’t have water supply, it shows that you don’t have a conscience and intend killing people,” Mettler said.
“That’s evil and barbaric. We condemn such behaviour and hope law enforcement will investigate this criminal act and bring the perpetrators to book.”
