Westbury, Coronation residents urge govt to address water crisis

Westbury residents protest over prolonged water outages on October 16, 2024.

2 minutes

Residents of Westbury and Coronationville in Johannesburg, are calling on government to urgently intervene in the water crisis in their area.

This morning scores of disgruntled residents embarked on a protest over daily water cuts for the past four years.

Authorities have advised motorists to avoid the area, as several roads have been barricaded with rocks and rubble.

Police are monitoring the situation.

Resident Nathan Jones says, “I want the government to fix it. Look we are sitting years without water now, how long can we sit like this? If this was Soweto they would have burnt the place down long ago, but us they are putting us in the vans for burning tyres.”

Jones says, “The government needs to cooperate with us and tell us what they are going to do to rectify the situation. Last time they were here they told us they are going to put the water on and the water was on for two days then off again, so what was that, it’s just to make us feel nice, no man.”

Another resident Glenda Morrison says the water situation is unbearable.

Morrison says, “It’s very bad, so bad that they sometimes don’t even switch on the water and our problem is that we have a lot of elderly people staying there and they need someone that can go fetch water for them. So that is our problem and we have people with babies. I mean how can we live without water? I understand electricity we can live without but not water.”