Jabulile Mbatha5 December 2024 | 10:45

Joburg Water: Tens of thousands of households using illegal water connections

Johannesburg Water revealed on Thursday during a tour to its Deep South System that the Orange Farm reservoir alone loses R1.4 billion a year from illicit connections.

Joburg Water: Tens of thousands of households using illegal water connections

Picture: Pexels

JOHANNESBURG - Illegal water connections are responsible for a large portion of the billions of rands lost every year.

Joburg Water brought this to light on Thursday during a tour of its deep south system.

The water utility spends R9 billion a year on water where R60 million is lost from Region G because of illegal connections.

This reservoir supplies water to several areas in the southern part of Johannesburg, including Orange Farm, Stretford and Lakeside.

Joburg Water's Region G operations manager, Kagiso Manganye, said that tens of thousands of households were connecting their water illegally.

"There’s a number of informal settlements that we have identified in Region G that are connected illegally into our system. Each and every informal settlement has got a certain number of households but those that we have identified with illegal connections, I'm talking about the number of households, consists of 40,000."