Governor Parkop apologizes for the city water disruption

A Water PNG main pipe burst near the PNG Power headquarters in Hohola, with residents collecting free water (Image: Supplied)

National Capital District Governor, Powes Parkop has appealed to residents in the nation's capital to be patient as Water PNG is working on fixing the water woes faced in the city.

The Governor made these comments when speaking at the launch of the NCD Governors Netball Cup yesterday at Rita Flynn.

Governor Parkop said Water PNG told him that the issue is caused by small reservoirs which require upgrade to meet the growing population in the city, thus, work will require time.

The situation is that Water PNG started cleaning up some of the reservoir up at Mount Eriama.

"I think their intention was to clean after the festive period, but they changed their mind, and so short notice on all of us, but we will have to bear with it," Parkop said.

"I cannot speak for Water PNG as I have tried to verify from them since Thursday what the situation is but hopefully, water will return to the city starting today.

Governor Parkop apologizes on behalf of Water PNG to the residents of Nations Capital.

"It is not an acceptable situation that we have in the city. I hope that the situation comes to an end soon and people can have access to this basic need, which is water, have their bath, cook, wash clothes and be able to come back to normalcy again." NCD Governor said.

Meanwhile, the plant operations team of Water PNG responded that Rouna 1 and 3 were fully restored at 2:15 AM with Rouna 4 coming online shortly after.

Due to the prolonged disruption, reservoir storage was utilized around midnight to provide interim relief to customers. As a result, the network now needs to stabilize as plant inflows continue to increase.

The Water PNG team said they worked overnight and were able to restore supply across most areas. This includes flushing trunk mains and rebalancing reservoirs and District Metered Areas [DMAs].

Once again, this highlights that the existing network is significantly undersized for a city the size of Port Moresby.

This outage was planned. However, given the age and condition of the system, future outages of greater scale and complexity are a certainty and may require extended timeframes to resolve.

There are a few areas, where locals threatened WPNG staff and prevented maintenance and repairs.

Notably the HP area where a large main was damaged by a landslip. Water PNG staff will return with Police this morning.

There are a few reported bursts around town that will need repair.