Damaged major main causes 36-hour water cut
A fault in a major water pipe close to the Pembroke reverse osmosis plant left residents in Swieqi and surrounding areas high and dry for 36 hours between Tuesday and yesterday.
A Water Services Corporation spokesman said the fault dev-eloped on Tuesday morning in Mediterranean Street, Pembroke.
Repair works were immediately undertaken and the service was meant to be restored by 10 that evening.
However, the problem persisted and water could not be restored due to technical difficulties.
Work continued throughout the night and the service was expected to have been restored by last night.
While apologising for the inconvenience caused, the spokesman said the company could not pre-empt such faults.
The areas affected included St Julians, Swieqi, Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq, Paceville and Pembroke.
Several readers phoned The Times to complain, some of them saying they could not get through to the corporation or had been left waiting on an answering machine.
Most complained they were left in the dark on what was happening. They said there was no news on the radios or television and even on timesofmalta.com.
A 76-year-old disabled man from Swieqi said he had been without water for 36 hours and no one was given any information on what was happening.
He said he had been calling the corporation's freephone number for several hours but to no avail.
Another man said the water cut was an inconvenience but after such a long time without water it became a public hazard.
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R. Inglott
Jul 30th 2009, 13:54
If you happened to live in Swieqi you had no water, nor any internet connection if you were subscribed with Melita. The evening before we had a major blackout and a group of Spanish students were running around scaring families at home with firecrackers; taking advantage of the pitch darkness.... So within 24 hours we had no electricity, followed by no water and no internet plus a group of lousy students keeping us awake..
If you tried the Melita website you really needed to search hard for information regarding whether or not there was a connection problem from their side; I spent over an hour checking my internet settings to try and find out if there was anything wrong from my side.... what a rotten waste of time.
( Dear Melita, instead of those lousy ads on your main page you should have put up a notice stating that there was a problem, in clear and bold text perhaps explaining what really went wrong and why there is no connection, not leaving us in the dark and wasting our time....)
Brian Maloret
Jul 30th 2009, 13:45
T Aquilina
No it should not happen. Having no access to water at any time let alone during hot weather is a public health issue. Like the loss of electricity for 9 hours several weeks ago and loss of international telephone and internet services for 6 hours earlier this week; these companies should have emergency back-up services for when problems do arise. Anything less is unaccepatable.
T Aquilina
Jul 30th 2009, 10:27
Mishaps do happen and no one should expect these not to ever occur. However, the provider should, at the very least, inform the public immediately via all the media, including websites, whilst also sending updates when a service is shut-down for more than a few hours. The public deserves to be informed of these situations and this will help ease the general frustration and angst.
Lawrence Bonello
Jul 30th 2009, 10:16
The WSC's freephone number is just another gimmick.
Last week I spent over half an hour trying to report a heavily leaking pipe in my road after office hours. All I got was the standard "You have reached......" (as if I didn't know) followed by music and/or an engaged tone.
And these people get fat salaries out of our taxes!!!