Water shortages halt Walvis Bay fisheries

Fishing industry activities at Walvis Bay have slowed to a crawl as water supply issues continue to plague the town.

For the past two weeks, fish processing factories have found themselves unable to source the water they rely on from the municipality, forcing them to send out trucks to procure water elsewhere.

Princess Brand Processing operations manager Vaino Nampala says the supply interruptions are slowing down production significantly, leading to significant financial losses.

“The situation is very bad because, while we are currently running production, we can’t run at full speed because we run out of water. We have no water supply from the municipality at all,” he told The Namibian over the weekend.

According to the manager, this has resulted in a vessel which was meant to sail on Friday remaining in the harbour until yesterday, with no clear indication of when it would depart.

“We don’t know what time we’ll finish. It’s all on the mercy of the water. If we run out of water, we have to stop production again until the trucks come [and] they fill up our tanks,” he said.

He said the municipality told him that the issue will only be resolved within the next 60 days, which the industry will be hard-pressed to endure.

“I think it’s quite unacceptable for the whole industry to come to a standstill just because of the delay in supplying whatever equipment is needed to rectify this situation. I mean, this is a crisis; we can’t wait for 60 days,” he lamented.

He further claims that the Walvis Bay municipality had only warned the industry of poor water pressure ahead of time, rather than the outages that are occurring, leaving companies blindsided. Now, he hopes collaboration can help solve the problem more quickly.

“I just hope it can be rectified sooner than later. I think the municipality can just call us in and just see where we can assist. If it’s the municipality or the Namibia Water Corporation (NamWater), we can just stand together and assist because for us to delay, to wait for another 60 days is just not acceptable. The financial implication is just too huge to bear with,” he said.

NamWater claims that the water shortage is caused by electricity shortages affecting its main boreholes. These, in turn, are caused by ageing infrastructure and voltage drops at the Rooi Bank and Dorop South aquifer systems.

In a public notice recently, the water utility stated they are “in the advanced stages of procuring and replacing the affected powerlines”, adding that they “remain committed to restoring full normalcy and will continue to keep stakeholders updated on developments”.

Both NamWater and the Walvis Bay municipality indicated that they would soon be issuing responses addressing the concerns of the fishing industry and the allegations of insufficient forewarning on water outages.

In an age of information overload, Sunrise is The Namibian’s morning briefing, delivered at 6h00 from Monday to Friday. It offers a curated rundown of the most important stories from the past 24 hours – occasionally with a light, witty touch. It’s an essential way to stay informed. Subscribe and join our newsletter community.