STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK: ‘Send out the plumbers and the water bills!’ deputy minister tells leaky councils

Deputy Water and Sanitation Minister Dr Jack Bloom has outlined plans to ‘narrow the gap’ between government promises and the delivery of water and sanitation services. But with roughly 13,000 unfixed leaks in the Durban area alone, these bold promises are unlikely to be fulfilled any time soon.

More than 20 years after the last major policy review, the government has invited the public to comment on its latest plans to overhaul South Africa’s largely dysfunctional water and sanitation sector – placing a fresh emphasis on a “modernised” regulatory system featuring mandatory, enforceable service delivery agreements with municipalities.

At a public consultation meeting in Durban on 22 September, the national Department of Water and Sanitation presented an outline of its new Strategic Framework for Water and Sanitation Services, nearly 23 years after the previous version was approved by Cabinet.

Deputy Water and Sanitation Minister Jack Bloom acknowledged, however, that there was a long way to go in “narrowing the gap” between government promises and delivery to ordinary citizens.

“When I visited eThekwini last month, I saw residents [who had been] without tap water for years, a backlog of 13,000 leaks, sewage spills, and flood damage still unrepaired after four years.

“Nationally, more than two million households still use unventilated pit toilets. One in five of those households is in KwaZulu-Natal.”

He noted that the eThekwini municipality reported 58.7% non-revenue water in the last financial year – meaning that more than half the treated and pumped water was not reaching paying customers.

In an interview with Daily Maverick, Bloom spoke of his “deep frustration” that his department had to launch at least 96 criminal cases against municipalities nationwide for sewage pollution and wastewater treatment failures.

“But fixing the water leaks is not rocket science. We need to start with basic things – like sending out plumbers and sending out water bills. In some cases, there are no water meters ... so how can you send out bills or get people to pay them if water consumption is not even measured in some cases? Cities also need to install smart meters, starting with the biggest users.”

Bloom said municipal revenue derived from water should be ring-fenced to ensure that infrastructure and operations are properly financed, noting:

“It’s just so frustrating that so much clean water is wasted from leaks running down the streets.”

He said that even after laying criminal charges against municipalities as a “last-resort measure”, there were still councils defaulting on the terms of plea and sentence agreements in which fines imposed by the courts were earmarked to repair neglected or broken infrastructure.

“So now we are having to lay further charges of contempt of court against a number of municipalities, including the Rand West municipality.”

To address some of these problems, there were now law reform proposals before Parliament to hold municipal managers and other senior officials personally liable for service delivery failures.