The Department of Water Affairs in the regions of Limpopo and Mpumalanga hosted Parliament’s Standing Committee on Appropriations, i.e. SCoA for short, during this week of 22 to 25 July. The Committee, headed by its Chairperson Mr ME Sogoni, was on an oversight visit to some of the projects driven by the department towards the delivery of basic services, in this instance water to the people of the country.
The Committee began its work in Limpopo where they received a briefing on the developments around the Nandoni Water Treatment Works and Distribution Networks. This session was hosted in Thohoyandou and included an interrogation of issues by members of the Committee as well as a site visit to the different areas of the pipeline.
The interaction was between the Committee and the Department’s officials led by the Deputy Director-General (DDG) responsible for Regions, Ms Thandeka Mbatha, the acting DDG responsible for the National Water Resource Infrastructure, Ms Zandile Mathe, as well as the acting Regional Head of Limpopo, Ms Lucy Kobe. The Regional Head of Mpumalanga, Mr Fikile Guma was also present together with a host of stakeholders like the Water research Commission, Water Service Authorities, SALGA, Vhembe and Enhlanzeni District Municipalities, the Bushbuckridge Local Municipality, CoGTA, Lepelle Northern and Bushbuckridge Water Boards, MISA, to name but a few of the stakeholders represented there.
The Committee’s work is to do oversight as they mentioned, over work that the department is involved in, ensuring that primarily there was accountability and responsibility not just over the public money that the department is responsible for, but that as the department continues in its work there is a clarity of the responsibility towards the electorate who have put their faith in the government to make their lives better and the country a better place to live in, thus instilling a sense of urgency in the delivery of services.
As deliberations were ongoing the Committee members were enquiring and interrogating issues around the speed of delivery, challenges experienced in ensuring good pace of delivery, issues of delays and cost escalations, litigations underway and outstanding processes of recovery of public money on non-delivery, completion dates of the infrastructure build thus availability of potent water at the tap.
The discussions were robust and looking for frank responses, the ideal being that the final message to the populace needs to and must be as truthful as possible and timelines must be adhered to as much as possible for the social good. The deliberations around the Nandoni infrastructure and what it is supposed to achieve revealed the progress made and yet how that progress still lagged behind people’s expectations and therefore has the potential to be understood as a lack of seriousness around service delivery. The DDG Regions, standing in for the Acting Director-General, on behalf of the department and all officials, undertook to ensure a proper report is made available to SCOA in September and that the report will address in the best possible way all the concerns and questions raised by the SCOA members.
In Mpumalanga the visit was around the Inyaka Water Treatment Works in Bushbuckridge. The deliberations, after the presentation by the CoGTA HOD on behalf of all, and site visit were at the Treatment Works themselves. The Committee was received not just by the hierarchy of the District Municipality but also by the MEC responsible for CoGTA in the province. The deliberations here were also robust with the one clear indication of the close cooperation that exists between the three tiers of government. The Minister and Premier’s leadership on the matters of water, particularly driven by the Memorandum of Understanding between the DWA and the Province of Mpumalanga as signed by the Minister and the Premier, has brought about a desired impetus into the close collaboration that exists and that could serve water delivery very well if replicated country-wide.
Progress reported on the issues that were afflicting the community of Bushbuckridge, issues which the completion and commissioning of the Inyaka Water Treatment Works sought to resolve, the Committee indicated its interest in a number of issues which look to be a common thread that threatens or even reduces the ability of government, in this instance represented by the Department of Water Affairs, to deliver on its mandate.
Some of the issues the committee raised concern about are:
- What are the concurrent functions between provision/completion of bulk and access to tap water? What are the linkages/integrations in relation to capacity (human and financial)? And what is the meaning of this lack of access to people?
- Is there a regard for water as a basic and constitutional right, especially amongst officials?
- Within the municipalities there continues to be a weakness in availability of programme management capacity; the fact that multi-billion rand programmes are primarily dependent on service providers is not helpful;
- Do the Water Boards have requisite capacity?
- There are many role players within water value chain without a clarity of roles and responsibilities thus oversight is difficult;
- Is there sufficient internal regional offices' capacity to support the work of the municipalities and provincial governments?
This is to mention just a few of the issues that the committee members raised as needing attention to ensure that the work that happens in the sector, under the stewardship of the DWA, must be of such quality that less of the time is taken around raising concerns yet the quality of the final product will remain unquestioned.
The department will report to the Committee in September at Parliament in Cape Town on what has happened beyond the visit that the Committee hopes will be understood in the vein of ensuring the work of Government continues unhindered.
For more information contact:
Sputnik Ratau
Cell: 082 874 2942
