18h00 - 13 Aug 2013
The recent water outages at Chris Hani, Cullen Bowles, Rosa Parks, Calata, Margaret Smith, Amina Cachalia, Ellen Kuzwayo, Joe Slovo, Centenary, Dingemans and Livingstone have continued unabated today. The water outage is a major concern to Rhodes University and it is threatening to disrupt the academic life, and students’ life on campus.
The following measures have been implemented by the University:
- 2 litres of drinking water per student per day to affected students
- Water is being provided to these residences for the flushing of toilets
- wet wipes are available for hygiene purposes;
The University received the following update from the Municipality this morning at 10h00:
“We have been at the H'poort Dam for the whole night fitting the Exciter Voltage (New). We are busy with the lining and hope to be complete in about three hours. We will be starting the pumps after ALL has been tested and ready for commission but TODAY is the day”.
At the time of writing, the University has not received any further update from the Municipality. We are currently facing a huge challenge, as almost all our residences are currently affected by the water outage. This unfortunately means that the ‘pairing’ of residences with and without water is not effective at this time.
At 18h30 this evening, separate urgent meetings have been set up in the five Halls which have been most affected to date: the Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Dean of Students and Deputy Director: Residential Operations will each attend one of these meetings in order to discuss the water crisis with students, listen to their concerns and keep students informed of future plans.
An emergency meeting will take place at 08h00 tomorrow morning to review the situation, and a further statement will be made thereafter.
A public protest march has been set up for 13h00 tomorrow, starting from the Clock Tower in order to express our outrage and strong dissatisfaction at the ongoing water outage which has affected large numbers of the people of this town for the past eight days.
The march will be led by Dr Badat and Dr Mabizela, and a formal public statement will be handed over to the Makana Municipality.
The protest aims to be a peaceful, formal and dignified expression of deep concern at the needless suffering which has resulted from the lack of water supply to the University and the citizens of our town. It also seeks to ensure that Makana Municipality realises the seriousness of the situation, and to bring this crisis to the attention of national government and media.
Vivian de Klerk
DEAN OF STUDENTS