Any of you locals seen the GP bakkie around the streets of our town, with a flashing light, 3 guys and a big orange box on wheels...... and a fellow with a tripod?
Sources tell me that they are checking the water pipelines beneath the streets....
Wonder what the results will be?
This was published in one of the mine wides... they are doing the survey of the sewerage and water infrastructure in town.
I recall in the days of the Plumber workshop (old W91) where the fire station is now, there used to be a massive file about A2 size of each residential plot in town portraying exaclty where each property's poopipes run and the water shut-off valves. I don't know if there was any reliable record of the mainlines running down the streets.
Imagine someone applies to erect a building with a basement or cellar and theres no record of the water main feeding the "GM's reservoir"... excavation begins and whopee!!! where does this water come from???
So yes, it is probably well overdue and necessary.
It does tickle us long resident Omunders' curiosity though.
The point is..... that in the good old days, records were kept.... what happened to all that documentation........? Imagine the money being wasted again!
Remember the good old days were CDM. Only so much info was sufficient to meet the requirements. The whole "PROCLAF%^&*MATION" requires other perhaps more elaborate details and up to date records.
Much of the info could well have been lost between the passing from Namdeb to SAJV to OTMCo to J&P to OTMCo to Namdeb. If there were clear cut lines off responsiblity from day1 then accurate records could be maintained.
I often think of the archives that we had at Town Electrical of drawings, manuals and product catalogs etc for various equipment around Oranjemund. Mike V and Alf would remember
them clearly, a whole office wall of cabinets full of files etc. Some of the cupboards now stand sort of empty at HT workshop at Uubvley. So what happened to all the material?????
Now you see my point... we did things differently in the past. We knew that 1 day someone will need to reference something, today's mob just hack at it until it comes right by itself or by chance, and if that fails, oh well it is probably old so we'll just chuck it and install a "Traiwanadese" models...!
My 2 cents of course
I tried to get information about Affenrucken when I was writing the book and was told that it was ancient history and all the personnel files and bits of information about Affenrucken was chucked away - it was pre-Namdeb. so was irrelevant and no longer required. Makes one wonder what else was turfed out. . . .
Malcolm
Andy D you are quite correct in saying that the info we recorded and collected has since been replaced by nothing. These records did not go hand in hand with the moves of company to company after the outsourcing exercise. I remember that we had two walls of filing cabinets filled with relevant info that must still be in use today. I also wonder where that all went to...........
Mmmh! Here is an interesting email from a reliable source, an educated Old Timer who knew this particular dept very well...
"The german forman Hans Kuhnel forced every plumber who did an alteration to a pipe line/ sewerage tank ANY BUT ANY PIPE LINE IN TOWN
TO METICOUSLY ( SPELLING) record every SINGLE ALTERNATION on the PLANS THAT WAS KEPT FOR EVERY HOUSE/ SECTION/ MAIN LINES/ ON THE MINE PIPE LINES - AND THIS TRADITION WAS CARRIED ON FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS - ON A DAILY WEEKLY BASIS -
until one clever bright spark, took this THICK, BUT VERY THICK FILE with all the plans and all the
alternations of all the changes and threw
IT AWAY ! "
Oooooooh I wander who the source could be
laughpoint image19 image24 image16 image041 :nono1: yellocard