A severe water crisis is gripping the Merafong City area, leaving residents in towns like Carletonville, Fochville, and Kokosi struggling to perform basic daily tasks. The taps are running dry not due to a drought, but because of a financial standoff between the municipality and its bulk water supplier, Rand Water.
The situation has deteriorated so drastically that it is now directly impacting essential services. The Carletonville Hospital officially confirmed it is facing a critical water shortage, a direct result of the ongoing municipal supply problems.
A Hospital in Crisis
In a statement, the hospital’s communication officer, Matabo Letsoalo, revealed the dire situation. “Carletonville District Hospital is currently experiencing water supply challenges due to ongoing municipal water outages, which have placed significant strain on our central water pumps,” Letsoalo said.
The strain proved too much, causing one of the hospital’s pumps to fail, severely limiting water supply to the main building. While the hospital has urgently escalated the repairs, the human impact is already being felt.
On social media, residents reported that the crisis is affecting patient care. “The hospital does not even have water to wash or bathe patients. My sister, who is in the hospital, has not bathed in three days,” one Carletonville resident lamented.
Communities Running Dry
Beyond the hospital walls, the frustration is palpable. Residents from Kokosi participating in a recent protest confirmed their taps have been dry for weeks. What began as intermittent outages has become a prolonged ordeal, with some areas reporting a complete lack of water for over three weeks.
By the start of the new week, complaints were still flooding in from across the municipality, indicating that a resolution is nowhere in sight. The political deadlock deepened when a local councillor, Carl Steenekamp, indicated that Rand Water had rejected proposals from the Merafong municipality to restore the supply.
The Political Impasse
The core of the issue remains the Merafong City Local Municipality’s failure to pay its massive outstanding debt to Rand Water. In response, the utility has “choked” the supply, a drastic measure that puts immense pressure on the municipality but inflicts collective punishment on residents.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is now pushing for tougher action, urging the National Treasury to withhold grants to Merafong until it settles its water account. This move highlights the severe financial mismanagement at the heart of the crisis and the desperate search for leverage to force a solution.
For the people of Merafong, the crisis is no longer an inconvenience; it’s a daily emergency. The situation exposes a brutal truth: when a municipality fails in its most basic fiscal duties, it is not the officials who suffer, but the patients in hospitals and the families in their homes, left waiting for a drop of water.
{Source: Citizen}
