Water and Sanitation Minister Nomvula Mokonyane has identified six key areas that require, what she terms, radical game changers.

Addressing the Water and Sanitation Summit, Mokonyane announced that the summit would be a platform to deal with key areas that require game changers in a radical way. These are:

• meeting service delivery challenges

• water and sanitation challenges

• water research, technology and innovation

• state of South Africa’s water resources

• the role of the private sector

• community participation.

“As part of the drive towards radical socio-economic transformation, we need to ensure that solutions to water and sanitation challenges must be about opening the sector to those that have been disenfranchised. This will have to done by providing skills development, economic empowerment as well access to quality water and dignified sanitation,” said Mokonyane.

She explained that the game changers will have to be about revisiting the country’s water ownership patterns and water use rights. They will have to harmonize the roles and responsibilities of institutions and all spheres of government in the best interest of the end-user, both individually and collectively.

Further, it is about educating and creating awareness among communities on conservation, preservation and security, as well as innovation. “We can achieve this only if we put communities first in what we do and demonstrate that it is business unusual,” Mokonyane reiterated.