Sakoca residents demand consistent supply due to water crisis

Serious concerns are being repeatedly raised by the residents of Sakoca in Tamavua, as they do not have consistent water supply and have to rely on rainwater despite being close to Suva.

A resident, Reshmi Kumar, says they get water from about 4am to 9am and at about 5pm in the afternoon, which is very difficult for her as she has four young children.

Kumar says she is concerned about the health and safety of her children as they have to rely on rainwater to wash their hands after going to the washroom, shower, and do the dishes and laundry.

She says they boil all drinking water but are asking when will they have consistent supply.

Another resident, Deepak Chand says they have been facing the issue for a very long time, and WAF should at least provide water tanks.

Another resident says they have not had consistent water supply since the 16th of this month and this is creating a lot of issues for his family.

He says he has young children who use a lot of water, and his wife has to struggle to look after the family. Nikita Prasad is also demanding WAF to provide the service they are paying for, and if they must ration it, then at least do it during the night so that people can save water and get their chores done during the day.

Prasad says she has a 3 and a 6-year-old child, and it is very difficult to bathe them and wash their clothes because as it is common for children, they get their clothes dirty quickly.

She says they have been facing the same issue for about four months.

The residents had raised similar concerns with fijivillage News last December.

Meanwhile, WAF says due to the drop in the level of the Tamavua reservoir during the recent heavy rain, some elevated areas did receive intermittent supply and the community was notified of the supply disruption however the water supply did not and has never been fully shut off for 10 days consecutively.

They say a contributing factor to the disruption experienced is the high number of connections in the Tacirua-Sakoca area as during extreme weather events, Savura intake experiences frequent blockages that disrupt the production rate and affects the water availability to residents in the area.

The authority says the balancing of the water system in Tamavua after a disruption like this takes a few days to recover or normalise, as the reservoirs are sequentially filled and are dependent on each other.

They also say that WAF is building resilience to have adequate amounts of water in the water supply systems.

WAF says the Viria Water Treatment Plant that is now producing water to full design capacity will be eventually linked to these elevated areas via a new Sawani to Colo-i-Suva pipeline.