All Water Service Authorities are being instructed to set aside at least 7% of their total budgets towards the maintenance and management of infrastructure.

Minister of Water and Sanitation Nomvula Mokonyane made this announcement at the recent Water and Sanitation Summit held in Boksburg, Gauteng, to look at the challenges facing the country. The money will also be used to ensure that each municipality has the capacity and capability to carry out this task efficiently and effectively.

According to Mokonyane, government will introduce legislation to ensure that this is implemented without fail. Municipalities have been warned to ignore this process at their peril.

“We will no longer hear about the excuses of ageing or non-functioning water infrastructure,” she said.

 

Improving water delivery

Speaking at the two-day Water and Sanitation Summit, Mokonyane said she has committed her department to improving and intensifying the delivery of the quality of drinking water among South Africans. Transformation and de-racialisation of South Africa through the provision of water must be fast-tracked.

Addressing the delegates, the minister said that she will ensure regular engagement with other role players to close the glaring gaps. Her department is set to convene a strategic planning session that would interrogate contentious issues that were raised at the summit.

 

Introducing game changers

“I can assure you ladies and gentlemen that I’m going to introduce game-changers and it’s not going to be business as usual. The planned session will ensure that we maintain and sustain our partnerships so that we can continuously evaluate ourselves to see how best we can take forward the mandate put before us,” said Mokonyane.

She added that the decisions of summit were informed by both the best available science, research and technology, as well as real-life, local experience.

For the department to contribute meaningfully to the realisation of the objectives of the government’s National Development Plan, and the electoral mandate, it had to introduce game-changers and do things differently.