Melville businesses left high and dry
TWO DAYS without water has run some Melville, Joburg, businesses dry.
“No one wants to come to Melville knowing there’s no water,” said Ishmael Kapula of Bread and Roses. “It’s a crisis.”
He explained he has lost lots of potential customers because he can’t serve coffee. He said coffee machines needed decent water pressure to function.
Hell’s Kitchen and Nuno’s, two other restaurants on Melville’s normally bustling 7th Street, were struggling to get enough water to wash dishes. One of Nuno’s staff members said his boss was shuttling water from another area in his car and had spent most of the morning driving back and forth.
Jono Kirby, owner of Hell’s Kitchen, said he bought bottled water yesterday for dishes and toilets. In the back of the restaurant, his staff placed metal tubs of water in the sinks to scrub dishes without losing water down the drains.
“Everything is becoming incredibly expensive,” Kirby said.
“It’s something you can’t live without, and closing for the day is not an option.”
His neighbour, who works at a nearby hair salon, walked in complaining about the situation. She said she had to use bottled water to wash her clients’ hair.
Another hair salon, Georgia Belle Hair, didn’t have bottled water to work with. Sandra Mukenge said she’d had to cancel three appointments.
“We can’t do anything,” Mukenge said.
She and her colleagues sat waiting for the water supply to come back. Another hair salon up the street had given up and closed for the day.
A laundromat was in similar straits. “We can’t do anything without water,” Susan Mazibuko said. She said they’d turned away four or five customers by 11am.
No one wants to come knowing there’s no water