Schools in Komani, formerly Queenstown in the Eastern Cape, are shutting their doors due to water outages of up to nine days in the area.
Hangklip Laerskool is one of them.
Principal, Henko Serfontein says they've shut down the school and its hostel due to health concerns for its children.
The school has been without water and sanitation since last week.
Serfontein says the decision was taken independently by the school governing body after the local municipality advised them that they can only expect a restoration of the water supply by this Friday at the latest.
Meanwhile, Chris Hani District Municipality Executive Mayor, Wongama Gela, says the water outage is being caused due to extremely low water levels at the Waterdown dam which supplies Komani, Whittlesea and surrounding townships.
He says this further resulted in maintenance issues, thus delaying the process of turning the water supply valves back on.
Gela says a technical team is currently on-site working on the problem and that seven water tankers have been dispatched to the affected areas.
"The levels of the dam were at 30% last week and as a result, they were also required to undergo maintenance and operations work."
"Due to the low levels of water at this stage, our pumps are unable to function. Whenever we try and pump water, they then trip and therefore we are unable to pump water to our own waterworks where water is cleaned and redistributed to communities." he added
