“We can say that residents and visitors to the city of Johannesburg needn’t fear about the quality of water supply to city,” the utility’s laboratory support manager Russel Rimmer said.

Speaking at a briefing on the R3.1-billion program of improvements and replacements within the city’s 10,000 kilometer water mains network, he said they conduct more than the legally required number of sample tests on supplies they receive from Rand Water, and were confident that the city’s supplies were safe.

“We do over 40 tests on the samples to be 100 percent sure of the water quality,” he said.

“Sometimes we are even scared to brush our teeth and we go out [in Europe] and buy a bottle of water. So, our water is safe.”

They had recently won the “Blue Drop” award from the department of water affairs which said the city had the cleanest water nationally and ranked among the world’s best.

The proposals, details of which are contained in a document tabled at a meeting of Parliament’s water affairs portfolio committee on Tuesday, appear to fly in the face of an announcement made by Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica last month.

“I want to allay the fears of South Africans that there is not in the near future a possibility of a [tariff] hike. It’s not in the pipeline,” she told a media briefing at Parliament on April 13.  Questioned about this later on Tuesday, the department’s media liaison director, Linda Page, said that there was no contradiction.

“You will remember that the minister was responding to a question on whether there are likely to be tariff increases linked to funding for infrastructure and thus potential increases in the price of raw water.  “The increases that the water boards are proposing… are the normal annual increases linked to the CPIX because they operate on a cost recovery basis,”

These range from 6,2% for Umgeni Water (from R3,24 a kilolitre to R3,47), to 43% in the case of Namakwa (from R6,37 to R9,11).

Among the water boards supplying the larger metropolitan areas, Rand Water is calling for a 14,1% increase (from R3,48 a kilolitre to R3,97) and Amatola for between an eight and 8,8 percent increase.  Bushbuckridge Water is proposing a 12,46% increase.

by Sapa.