CITY of Windhoek says it is replacing the water distribution network in Groot Aub and will start installing individual household and community prepaid meters to improve water supply to the reswidents of the rapidly expanding settlement.
This was confirmed by CoW spokesperson Lydia Amutenya in an interview with Nampa on Wednesday.
“After that CoW will construct a bigger reservoir,” she added.
This follows a request by Groot Aub community leader Demetrio Beukes, to construct additional water reservoirs as he says the existing one, was initially constructed to cater for less than 10 000 people. He added that the growing population is making it difficult to have sufficient water for every household at the settlement.
“The biggest challenge we have is that when the reservoir was made it was only for 6 000 to 10 000 people. With the influx of people that small reservoir is now supplying 24 000 people and there will always be a shortage,” Beukes told Nampa.
Amutenya confirmed that approximately 24 000 people are currently living in Groot Aub, but explained that Groot Aub’s water shortages are not linked to the reservoir’s size.
“It is not the reservoir that is too small to cater for more people, but it is the total safe yield (abstraction from existing boreholes) that is limited to providing water to 10 000 people. We can only provide a maximum of 60m3 (cubic metres) per hour from existing boreholes,” Amutenya said.
She said CoW currently has six boreholes serving the people of Groot Aub. The city council recently announced it had successfully drilled a 200-metre borehole in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform. Seven additional boreholes will be drilled, CoW announced, adding that this will put an end to the settlement’s water shortages.
“What needs to happen is after they drill these new boreholes, they need to build another reservoir and strategically put up tanks in each location so that those tanks can provide water for each location,” Beukes told Nampa. The City of Windhoek took over Groot Aub’s administration in 2017 after the expansion of the city’s boundaries.
-Nampa