The Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, has come out strongly in defence of the bilateral agreement signed with Cuba on Monday 9 September 2013, in a recent statement to the public in which she says she would like to clarify misconceptions around the deployment of Cuban water specialist engineers to South Africa after inaccurate media reports and misleading commentary about the contents and intention of the bilateral agreement .

The bilateral cooperation agreement was signed by Minister Molewa and her Cuban counterpart, Maria Chapman Waugh, who is the Minister of Water Resources in Cuba, to recruit water specialists from Cuba who include hydrologists, water resources and water supply specialists, engineering services and geo-hydrologists to augment the skills capacity in the sector and to work mainly in rural areas where there is a dire need for such specialist technical skills.

According to the statement by the Minister it is also important to note that the Cuba co-operation makes provision for the pairing of the Cubans with young South Africa engineers that will be sourced directly from University as part of skills transfer. “In addition the plan is that by the time the Cubans leave they would have developed enough capacity to close the gap.”

The Minister says that cooperation agreements with Cuba are not new and that South Africa has benefitted a great deal from previous programs with Cuba. “These agreements on skills transfer and capacity building between the two countries go back a while, the first agreement which was signed in 2001 covering a period of two years saw about eight [8] Cuban specialists spread around the country to assist us in the fields of sanitation, water services and geo- hydrology” she said.

“The second agreement between the years 2004 – 2007 had eleven Cuban experts in various areas like water quality, geo – hydrology, engineering, again also helped us plug the gaps in the skills arena for South Africa” she added. The Minister stated that, contrary to reports that the new agreement will have 35 Cuban experts coming to South Africa ostensibly to “take jobs belonging to South Africans”, the reality is that the agreement is a global instrument of cooperation in various areas and has not specified any given number of experts from Cuba.

The Minister also noted that the department is conducting a needs analysis in the areas of cooperation covered by the agreement and as soon as that process is completed, recruitment will then begin based on the results of the analysis.

According to the statement released late last week by Department of Water Affairs spokesperson, Mava B Scott,, there have also been allegations that the Minister has ignored the South African market and has decided to recruit “skills so far away when these (skills) are available in the country;” according to some commentators who claim to speak on behalf of professional engineering associations and some academics.

“The reality is that there is a marked gap in the skills capacity for the water sector and the economy as a whole”, says the Minister. “This matter is addressed in the second national water resource strategy which records that the Energy and Water SETA Sector skills plan highlights a skills gap of some 3000 Engineers. The secondment of the Cuban water experts will hardly make much of a difference with such a large skills gap,” she added

She also challenged those who claim that the cost of hosting these experts will be heavy on the taxpayers and that the money should have been used to employ South Africans. “These experts are recruited at a middle management level in terms of the remuneration levels of government, costing us less than half a million rand per person per annum.”

“Part of this program involves capacity building, we want these experts to train and develop young engineers and technicians which we already produce from our two learning academies at the department and Rand Water” said the Minister. She also added that the department was hard at work to find diverse interventions to augment the skills gap in the sector and instead of pouring cold water on such initiatives, she expected the engineering community to help think together and collaboratively on such programs.

The Minister assured South Africans that such collaborative initiatives were mainly to the benefit of the country and would go a long way in helping us find solutions to the many challenges identified in our water strategy. “We have a responsibility to work with the global partners and share best practice in water management and the Cuban cooperation agreement must be seen in that light” she said.

She concluded by reminding South Africans that as a global citizen, South Africa participates in various water cooperation areas across the globe and it has benefitted a lot from the cooperation. “We share our water courses with our neighbours and in turn, with the continent and the globe, we have partnership programs with European Union members, Japan, China, India, the UK and the rest of the world, the Cuban cooperation agreement must be located within that global partnership network” said the Minister.