SLOW TRICKLE: Water trickles from a tap in Nompumelelo township in Beacon Bay, East London, as supply is restored but pressure remains low. Picture: MARK ANDREWS
Supply back in large parts of city, but low pressure still affects many
ALTHOUGH water supply was restored to large parts of East London yesterday, many businesses, hospitals, schools and private residences were still affected. Frere Hospital reported that its supply had been restored, but said that it still had to rely on tankers due to low water pressure.
The Border-Kei Chamber of Business said the loss to business operations following the disruption of the water supply earlier this week amounted to more than R400-million.
Most schools reported that operations were back to normal yesterday.
Frere Hospital chief executive Rolene Wagner said the water pressure was not at an optimum level to supply the entire hospital.
“The hospital and the maternity unit are being fed by BCM [Buffalo City Municipality] supply and supported by tankers from BCM and a private service provider,” she said.
“This will continue until there is adequate pressure in the system to run off the BCM line only.”
Wagner said only laundry units were operating on BCM supply independently.
On Monday, the hospital switched over to its 440 000-litre back-up reservoir system.
Wagner said yesterday a total of 250 000 litres of water had been delivered to the hospital’s reservoirs during the course of Tuesday night by BCM and the private service provider.
As a precaution, the hospital had started off the day with emergency and urgent operations only.
Operations at the Mercedes-Benz South Africa plant resumed at 6am yesterday.
The plant was shut down at 2pm on Tuesday due to the water outage.
Spokesman Asanda Fongqo said the interruption in water supply had necessitated the halt in operations.
“Operations were halted for two shifts – the afternoon shift and the late shift,” Fongqo said.
“Plans are in place to recover any losses without any impact on our production programme.”
The Border-Kei Chamber of Business said the cuts had had a dramatic impact on business in the metro.
Chamber executive director Les Holbrook said: “The lack of communication and relevant information led to speculation, damaging rumours and knee-jerk responses by business.
“The resultant losses so far total R460-million, and are likely to be higher as it takes time for the water to be restored . . .
“While we gather our resources and restart industry and commerce, we call on our metro leadership to implement sweeping changes to ensure that such a disaster never occurs again, and to implement a far-reaching communication strategy so that every business and household is not left guessing what the situation is.”
The post Taps start to flow in East London appeared first on HeraldLIVE.