About 15 families in Velovelo, Lautoka will have to wait another three weeks for their water supply to normalise after not having regular supply for a year.
This comes as residents had raised serious concerns where they get water from about 11pm to 5am everyday and have to be up late at night to fill their water tanks.
While responding to questions by fijivillage News, the Water Authority of Fiji says intermittent water supply to customers residing in the elevated parts of Velovelo Road in Lautoka is due to hydraulic constraints experienced on existing DN80 and DN50 water mains supplying the area.
They say the water supply is further impacted by the increase in the number of houses coming up along the Velovelo Tramline Road where the majority of the customers had been connected through the gang meters from the same water main.
WAF says the community had raised similar issues in the past and the initiative was taken to lay a DN100 water main as a quick-win project to have individual water meters from the gang meters transferred to this new main.
They say a new 500 metre DN100 water main was laid and commissioned a few weeks ago; however, their team is currently working on transferring the individual meter connections.
WAF says this cost the Authority about $120,000.
They say once all the meter connections are transferred from the DN80 main to the new DN100 main, the families should see some improvements in supply, however, further improvement is required to boost the existing DN80 main through the new main to have adequate water pressures to sustain normal supply to elevated customers.
WAF adds these works are planned to be progressively carried out in the next 2 to 3 weeks and in the interim, water carting trucks will be providing temporary relief to the affected customers on a need basis.
