• The Airports Company South Africa said the water outage at OR Tambo on Saturday was due to ongoing maintenance work.

• A restaurant owner at OR Tambo said the outage cost him R10,000 in revenue and quickly became a health risk.

Taps at OR Tambo International Airport ran dry for five hours on Saturday, leaving passengers and business owners without water in both the domestic and international terminals.

The water outage hit from 6am to 11am, one of the busiest periods at the airport. The Airports Company South Africa (Acsa) blamed "ongoing maintenance work" in a social media post.

One tenant said there was nowhere to wash hands and no access to bathrooms during the outage.

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A restaurant owner said the disruption cost him R10,000 in revenue.

"Not only could I not brew coffee, but we also could not wash dishes. The kitchen staff could not wash their hands. In a short space of time it became a health risk," he said, The Citizen reported.

He said if only 10 of the airport's eateries lost the same amount, Acsa's "urgent repairs" would cost tenants several hundred thousand rands.

"But we will not be compensated. We didn't know it was coming," he said.

Passengers complained online. One traveller wrote on Facebook: "This is really not acceptable. We have family waiting for flights and no toilets are open. Do you not have any back-up water supply?"

DA Johannesburg mayoral candidate Helen Zille called the outage "incredible in the true sense of the word."

It is not the first problem at OR Tambo recently. The airport had several power outages late last year and a major roof leak in the domestic departures terminal during a storm in January.