On Wednesday, suburbs in the north and west of the City woke up without water after maintenance at the Eikenhof Pump Station began on Monday. (Papi Morake/Gallo Images)

• Scores of Johannesburg suburbs are without water due to ongoing maintenance at Rand Water’s pump stations.
• Despite scheduled maintenance plans, these appear to be running behind schedule as water is not being pumped at specified rates. 
• Residents, especially those in high-lying areas, are facing low water pressure or no water at all.

Johannesburg is suffering major outages five days into planned Rand Water maintenance on the Palmiet, Zwartkopjes, Eikenhof, and Daleside booster pump stations which supply more than half of the City with water.

The maintenance is set to be completed only on 29 July, but residents are already complaining about their dry taps.  

On Wednesday, suburbs in the north and west of the City woke up without water after maintenance at the Eikenhof Pump Station – which supplies water to the Randburg, Roodepoort, Soweto and Johannesburg Central systems – began on Monday.

By Wednesday, six of the 10 White Ridge, Waterval, Randburg and Roodepoort water systems were completely dry. This area is home to more than a million people.

By Thursday morning, these suburbs still had no water in their taps, with residents scrambling to get water from available water tankers.

READ | Taps start to run dry in Joburg suburbs four days into critical planned maintenance

Ward 99 councillor Nicole van Dyk said on Thursday that councillors had yet to receive an update from Rand Water or Johannesburg Water. The ward includes the suburbs of Blairgowrie, Cresta, Ferndale, Linden, Darrenwood and Jacanlee.

In an update at noon on Thursday, Van Dyk said work on the Waterval/Randburg system had been completed at 10:45.

“Rand Water said the systems would take time to recover and [ward 99] will only start seeing gradual improvements in the network by Saturday. So there should be water in the taps by Saturday,” she said.

At midday on Wednesday, Johannesburg Water said Eikenhof Pump Station was pumping at 50% and would be pumping at 67% overnight, but this appears to have not happened.

Van Dyk told News24 that councillors queried why Eikenhof was still pumping at half speed on Wednesday afternoon, which was not what was indicated on the maintenance schedule.

She said she was told that Eikenhof would be pumping at 83% strength by 07:00 on Thursday. But this was not the case.

Van Dyk later told residents that Eikenhof would be pumping at 83% by 19:00 on Thursday, according to Rand Water, which “should help the systems recover”.

On Thursday morning, Rand Water spokesperson Makenosi Maroo said that it was still pumping at 67%. This would mean residents in high-lying areas would remain without water for longer than expected.

Maroo added:

News24 has sent further queries to Johannesburg Water asking for comment on the maintenance, which appeared to be behind schedule. The response will be added once received.

Meanwhile, Maroo said a power failure at Zwartkopjes booster power station on Wednesday night would affect pumping to Foresthill, Benoni, Meredale and Yeoville reservoirs in Johannesburg and the City of Ekurhuleni.

This comes hours after Rand Water completed work on the Zwartkopjes pump station.

Eskom has since fixed the fault.