The City of Johannesburg has restored electricity, water and sewerage services to residents living at Lillian Ngoyi (Bree) Street and surrounding areas after an explosion in the area disrupted services since last week.
The explosion claimed the life of one person and injured 48 others.
“As a city it has been of paramount importance for us to restore our services to the residents in the area as a matter of urgency and that is the reason [for] the level of commitment from our officials…to restore that we restore these services to the people.
“We wish to thank the residents of the area for their patience and their consideration and we will continue to monitor the area for any disruptions that may occur as a result of some of the work that is still being undertaken in that area,” City manager Floyd Brink said.
Brink said although investigations continue, the cause of the blast remains “inconclusive”.
“We continue to receive regular updates from the experts on site and are concurrently pushing to restore services and to prepare for the rehabilitation and reconstruction work of the road and the underground tunnels,” he said.
The city manager added that a team has been assembled to thrash out the scope and extent of the work needed in this regard.
“We have now established a team of engineers from various entities in the city to begin the planning and the scoping of that work that will be undertaken. It is evident to us that [in] rehabilitating the road surface and the underground tunnels, we will have to implement new standards of how we manage the underground services.
“Our work will then now seek to set the standard of what should be the most suited, safe and appropriate layout of the services as a city,” he said.
Brink assured citizens that any procurement undertaken in the process will be within the prescripts of the law.
“[City CFO] Tebogo Moraka…will oversee a team of persons from the various teams to manage and oversee any procurement that must be undertaken to facilitate the work in response to the disaster.
“He will be chairing the committee to ensure a level of compliance with relevant legislations, regulations and prescripts. The mandate is to ensure we comply with all legislated procurement rules and for us to be audit ready as and when we will be audited during this process,” he said. – SAnews.gov.za
