For the third day in a row nearly the entire town has no water supply – and the few homes that do have water are receiving the supply at very low pressure.<\/p>\n
Thousands of residents have been affected and are outraged at the incompetence of the municipality as suspicions arise that the real reason behind the problem is being covered up.<\/p>\n
This is because the municipality has not provided an adequate explanation as exactly what the problem is and is yet to do so.<\/p>\n
Numerous attempts to obtain information from various municipal officials, including the municipal manager Mandla Mnguni, Deputy Director of the Civil Engineering Department Rudolph Bouwer, and Communications Manager Prudence Magutle,were not responded to on Friday morning.<\/p>\n
The water was first cut off on Wednesday morning – coinciding with the municipal strike by more than 1 200 employees.<\/p>\n
The cause was said to be a pipe burst in Liter Street which took close to 24 hours to fix – only to burst again on Thursday morning.<\/p>\n
Water supply was only partially restored during the early hours of Friday morning and later cut off again.<\/p>\n
Residents received the following SMS late on Thursday afternoon: \u201cInterruption in water supply to Eastdene is because of damages to the main supply line in Liter Street. Estimated restoration time five hours.<\/p>\n
The Municipality is currently attending to the low water pressure in the other affected areas. Water tankers are used to fill the water network. Apologies for the inconvenience\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Freedon Front Plus claims that they will demand answers for this unexpected action.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe emergency department answered with a sleepy voice \u201cwe must check after 07:30\u201d. The Mayor\u2019s telephone is on voice mail. The fire department doesn’t know what the problem is,\u201d Johan Duvenage said in a statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the municipality workers have the right to strike and totally forget where their money comes from – the tax payer! It is our right as taxpayers to claim disciplinary action against those responsible\u201d.<\/p>\n
The municipality promised to provide some clarity on the matter by early this afternoon – this will be communicated as soon as it is received.<\/p>\n
Read other stories here:<\/p>\n
Update: No water in many parts of town<\/a><\/p>\n Water supply to Midmed reaches critically low levels<\/a><\/p>\n Municipal workers remain on strike<\/a><\/p>\n (Breaking News) Video: Flames, threats as municipal workers rampage<\/a><\/p>\n Video: Pepper spray, threats, as traffic officers go on strike<\/a><\/p>\n Update: \u2018Law enforcers lawless\u2019 MM says<\/a><\/p>\n Send a message to our SMS line 33658 or add us onto Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a> @Mobserv<\/a> to receive your free daily news updates. You can also WhatsApp us on this number 079\u00a0426 1396<\/p>\n Also check out our Video\u2019s<\/a> on Youtube<\/a> daily!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There has been a total blackout of information coming out of the municipality regarding the water crisis currently affecting Middelburg. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2844,"featured_media":53522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"hasGravity":false,"cxt_article_byline":"Yaseen Gaffar","cxt_disable_google_ads":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,2],"tags":[1049,1992,5395,5386,1088],"class_list":["post-53683","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-local-municipal-news","category-news-headlines","tag-danger","tag-gevaar","tag-no-petrol","tag-no-water","tag-warning"],"category_labels":{"Category":"News","SubCategory":"Local news"},"tag_labels":["danger","gevaar","No Petrol","No water","warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53683","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53683"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53683\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53683"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53683"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/develop.citizen.co.za\/middelburg-observer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53683"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}