Government seeks to work with the South African Local Government Association to review water and sanitation service delivery mechanisms in municipalities
A nationally coordinated task team consisting of the Departments of Water and Sanitation (DWS) and Corporative Governance and Traditional Affairs (COGTA), and the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) is being set up to initiate and coordinate Municipal Systems Act Section 78 processes in certain municipalities. This is one of the resolutions adopted during the recent Summit hosted by DWS with the 144 municipalities which are Water Services Authorities (WSAs).
The purpose is to review service delivery mechanisms for water and sanitation services, in an effort to address the decline of these services as outlined in Blue Drop, Green Drop and No Drop reports which were recently released by DWS. The Department carries out the Drop assessments in its role as Regulator of the water services sector in terms of the Water Services Act. The Regulator has a legal obligation to monitor the adherence of WSAs to national norms and standards, to inform the public of the results of this monitoring, and to take action where norms and standards are not being met. The task team will focus on the 105 municipalities that are in the critical and poor performing categories in terms of the Blue and Green Drop reports.
The Drop reports indicated a general decline in performance. For example, the Blue Drop report found that percentage of water supply systems with poor or bad microbiological water quality compliance (i.e. water that is not safe to drink) increased from 5% in 2014 to 46% in 2023. The Green Drop report found that the percentage of municipal wastewater systems in a critical state of performance (i.e. discharging partially treated or untreated sewage into rivers) increased from 30% in 2013 to 39% in 2022. The No Drop report found that the national average for municipal non-revenue water increased from 37% in 2014 to 47% in 2023.
DWS, COGTA, Municipal Infrastructure Support Agency, Department of Human Settlements, and National Treasury are providing extensive support to assist Water Services Authorities with the provision of water and sanitation services. This includes providing water and sanitation infrastructure grants worth more than R20 billion per annum; providing technical and engineering support and assistance; capacity building and training, and financial management advice and support. However, despite all this support, the drop reports indicate that municipal water services have declined sharply. This indicates that there are limitations to which support from the national government can solve the problems, and that more fundamental reforms are required. For example, routine maintenance and operations must be funded by revenue from the sale of water by municipalities to customers, and municipal councils must take the required decisions to prioritise budgets for this.
According to South Africa’s Constitution, the primary role of municipalities as WSAs is to ensure the delivery of water services, not necessarily to deliver the services themselves. In terms of the Water Services Act read together with the Municipal Systems Act (MSA), a Water Services Authority must decide whether to deliver water services itself, or to approve another Water Services Provider (WSP) to provide the services.
The Water Services Act states that the WSA can approve any legal entity (i.e. the municipality itself, a municipal entity, another municipality, a CBO, an NGO, another organ of state, a private company, or a water board) to function as a WSP in the municipality. Section 76-78 of the MSA requires a municipality to engage in defined feasibility study and public consultation processes before deciding to change the mechanism of service delivery.
Almost all WSAs in South Africa are currently both WSA and WSP (i.e. they have approved themselves as sole WSP, apart from Water Boards for bulk services). The Water Services Act requires the WSA and WSP functions to be managed and accounted for separately by municipalities, but this is generally not happening. The Act states that the key role of the WSA is to ensure that the WSP provides services which meet minimum norms and standards – and this is also generally not happening, as borne out by the results of the Drop assessments.
Other key decisions taken at the Summit include that all WSAs must develop action plans to address their Drop results and submit to DWS by the end of February 2024; that training institutions should prioritise the training of uncertified process controllers to enable them to become certified, and that all WSAs must issue advisory notices without fail when their drinking water fails to meet microbiological water standards.
Enquiries:
Wisane Mavasa
Cell: 060 561 8935
E-mail: mavasaw@dws.gov.za
