This morning we were all struggling to shower with the low water pressure restricting the flow of water. A quick check on our community WhatsApp group informed us that out local reservoir is nearly empty. This makes no sense as I know all the dams are high and are at over 100%.
The Vaal Dam which is the biggest one in our region is at 102.3% capacity so there has been sufficient rain of late and there have been no water restrictions. Suddenly having no water or very little water makes no sense but then we live in Africa and you tend to think of what the reasons could be and normally you are not that far from the truth with your conclusions.
The madness is last night we had heavy rain for about 30 minutes and we are now heading into rainy season so there will be an abundance of water. We would normally receive some type of notification that the water pressure would drop due to ongoing maintenance, but this is nothing of the sort.
Today is a public holiday so I guess those in charge are on leave and have left the tasks to juniors to monitor the reservoir levels. This is very feasible and a possible answer knowing the juniors are unskilled and most likely uneducated so reading a computer screen may be more than challenging.
The reservoirs are monitored with water being moved form various sources as required so they remain high which helps maintain the water pressure in the taps. We live close to the valley bottom so we are never normally affected and the higher areas tend to have no water when we still have water as they would require higher water pressure.
In South Africa we have government tenders which one of them would be the supply of water via water storage trucks. WE tend to have these in our area a few times per year when there is maintenance being done on the reservoir or a burst mains pipe.
These water tankers are privately owned and is known to be a mafia type business with reports of these syndicates disrupting water supply so their water tankers are used. This is the other option that could have created this situation and even though I favor the incompetence over the intentional your thoughts tend to swing this way because this country is so corrupt.
Knowing these mafia water suppliers are making a fortune from the supply of these water tankers then this cannot be ruled out.
A water tanker would cost brand new in the region of R1 million so 70 would cost R70 million so the tender offers roughly R190 million over 3 years so there is huge profits being taken from these tenders. These trucks are rarely used so when the tenders are renewed they are not needing to replace these water trucks. My thoughts tell me they have to use these trucks so many times per year to justify the tender costs and why some areas use these trucks more than others as this is intentional. Incompetence may not be the reason for little or no water today so who knows the real reasons, but I can assure you it is one of the two.