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Nelson Mandela Bay executive mayor, Nqaba Bhanga, says a full investigation will be conducted into this weekend's water outages that left several parts of the Metro dry.
He addressed his first official media briefing on Monday, since his discharge from hospital, on the water outages which have hit South End and Summerstrand as well as large parts of the Western suburbs.
Bhanga said the investigation would determine the extent of the water outage and the failure of water monitoring to pick this up timeously.
"We cannot at this stage rule out the possibility of this being sabotage. If this is proven to be the case, I will ensure that action is taken and criminal charges are laid against any individuals implicated," he said.
However, Bhanga said after meeting officials on Monday and receiving reports from them, there was no indication of sabotage.
He said the Airport Reservoir, which feeds areas such as South End and Humewood, experienced an electrical failure resulting in the reservoir depleting.
"This has since been repaired and water has already started returning, as at 15:00 the reservoir level was at 0.89% and filling up steadily," Bhanga said.
He said the second and more serious outage that occurred, affecting large parts of the Western suburbs, was due to a burst on the Bulk Pipeline in the Joe Slovo area, transferring water from the East to the West of the City.
Bhanga said the burst was repaired, but a second leak was discovered as a result of a coupling that shifted, which has also been repaired.
However, he said the pressure coming into the Standford Road booster pump station is not at the level that it should be, and repair work is underway.
"Officials have committed that water should start returning tomorrow and all areas should have normal water supply by Wednesday at the latest," he said.
