Minister of Water and Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, has launched National Water Week which will run from 17 to 23 March.

This year’s Water Week is celebrated under the theme “Celebrating 20 Years of Water Delivery for Social and Economic Development”. Molewa said at the launch that the sector has made great and necessary strides towards ensuring that in the twentieth year of South Africa’s democracy, government supports a sustainable, peaceful and vibrant democracy by ensuring security of water services and supply to the country.

“Water is a scarce resource. We as a country are in the unenviable position of being one of the thirty driest countries in the world, with our below world average rainfall. We have to and must conserve this resource even more that what everyone else can and does,” she said. For this reason, the Department of Water (DWA) takes the issues of pollution so seriously. In this light, the DWA recently installed R319 million rand pumps into the Central Basin shaft to pump Acid Mine Drainage (AMD). Once operational at the end of April these pumps will ensure that AMD in the Central Basin remains below the Environmental Critical Level.

Throughout this week, the DWA will be carrying messages on all communication platforms to ensure that National Water Week 2014 remains top of mind.

“As a department we must carry out our mandate of ensuring availability of bulk water supply to the nation. We also have a duty to support and assist the provincial and particularly the local government in ensuring access to water services is not compromised,” she said. Molewa pointed out that moving from an average of 59% access to potable water in 1994 to the current rate of beyond 95% was not an easy task. “We had to work hard together with our communities to be able to reach such proportions.”

“We will continue to tell our good story, the story of ‘Celebrating 20 Years of Water Delivery for Social and Economic Development’,” she concluded.