Fishing activities in Walvis Bay have slowed down to the crawl as the town continues to plague.
For the past two weeks, fish processing plants have been unable to source the water they depend on from local governments and have been forced to send trucks to source water elsewhere.
Princess Brand Processing Operations Manager Vaino Nampala says the disruption in supply has significantly reduced production volumes, leading to significant financial losses.
“Currently, while operating production, we can’t run at full speed because we run out of water, so the situation is very bad. There is absolutely no water supply from the municipality,” he told Namibian over the weekend.
This did not clearly indicate when it would depart, as the vessel intended for sailing on Friday was intended to remain in port until yesterday.
“We don’t know what time it’s going to be finished. It’s all at the mercy of the water. If we run out of water, we have to stop production again until the trucks arrive (and) they’ll fill up the tanks,” he said.
He told him that the municipality told him the issue would only be resolved within the next 60 days.
“I think it’s very unacceptable for the whole industry to be shut down because it was delayed in supplying the equipment needed to fix this situation. So this is a crisis. We can’t wait 60 days,” he lamented.
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He further argues that Walvis Bay municipalities had warned the industry of poor water pressure beforehand, rather than the outages occurring, leaving businesses blind. Now he hopes that collaboration will help resolve problems faster.
“I hope that we can fix it faster than late. I think the municipality can call us and see where we can help. If it’s the municipality or the Namibian Water Corporation (Namwater), we can just wait 60 days because we can just delay.
Namwater claims that water shortages are caused by a power shortage affecting its major boreholes. These are caused by aging infrastructure and voltage drops in ROOI banks and drop south aquifer systems.
Recent public knowledge states that water operators are “in a sophisticated stage of procuring and replacing affected power lines,” adding that they “continue to commit to a full restoration of normalcy and continue to keep stakeholders up to date on development.”
Both Namwater and Walvis Bay Municipality have indicated that they will issue a response immediately to address fisheries concerns and inadequate accident allegations regarding water halts.
