Gift of the Givers has once again stepped up to the plate, this time, by donating water to the Kalafong Hospital in Gauteng, amid the water woes in the province.
Gauteng community liaison officer Cliffort Mabe said the hospital and surrounding areas had been hit by a water outage, resulting in the hospital’s reservoir running empty.
“It seems like Rand Water is experiencing a decline in reservoir storage. Our team delivered nearly 2 000 five-litre bottles of water for patients as they need water, especially for taking their medication,” Mabe said.
The organisation has also set about digging trenches and doing other work at the Rahima Moosa and Helen Joseph hospitals.
Rand Water explained that its system was extremely sensitive to a power outage and that it could take a minimum of four hours to recover after an outage.
“The reservoir storage level had, as a result, dropped to 63% when the system recovered.
“The drop in water storage level in the reservoir resulted in Rand Water requesting municipalities to reduce their consumption to retain as much water in the reservoirs and ensure the system does not drop to a point of crushing and almost impossible recovery,” said Rand Water’s Makenosi Maroo.
She said power outages remained one of the biggest threats to the stability of Rand Water’s networks as it affected continuous water supply to municipalities.
Maroo said Rand Water systems had started stabilising pumping at maximum capacity.
“Full recovery, however, will be dependent on less frequent power failures. In the meantime, Rand Water urges all consumers to use water wisely to assist in the system full recovery,” she said.
Meanwhile, Eskom has implemented varying stages of load shedding for the remainder of the week.
IOL
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