Water for All flagship, KwaMhlushwa Stadium, Nkomazi Municipality
12 March 2009
Programme Director,
MEC for Local Government and Housing and Chairperson of the Governance and
Administration Cluster, MEC Mashego-Dlamini,
Members of the Executive Council,
Executive Mayors of Ehlanzeni District Municipality and Nkomazi Local
Municipality, Cllr KC Mkhonto and Cllr M Mavuso,
Chairperson of the Provincial House of Traditional Leaders, Inkosi SE
Mahlangu,
Councillors,
The Acting Director-General, Mr Mighty Mgidi, and senior managers in the public
service,
Our government's social partners,
The people of Nkomazi and Mpumalanga as a whole,
Ladies and gentlemen
On this important occasion marking the official launch of the Water for All
flagships, we are buoyed by progress that the province has already made in
assisting households to have access to clean water. Access to clean and safe
water is a fundamental human right that communities are entitled to.
Many of you will recall that as part of the 'Big Five' flagship programmes
announced in our 2007 State of the Province Address (SOPA), the 'Water for All'
flagship was prioritised to ensure that communities have access to water
services infrastructure and clean water by 2010. As a province, we are
cognisant of the fact that access to clean and safe water is vital for human
development and poverty eradication. Lack of access to clean water is one of
the major causes of water-borne diseases which cost human lives. Our focus on
the provision of clean water and improved sanitation is intended to mitigate
negative health impacts and improve the health profile of communities.
Colleagues, the launch of our flagship project to roll-out water
infrastructure today, comes against the back-drop of the emergency health
crisis we experienced recently with the outbreak of cholera in our province and
elsewhere as a result of the contamination of our water sources.
In the province, 387 people have been confirmed through laboratory tests as
cholera cases. To date, 30 people have lost their lives â 22 in Bushbuckridge
municipality, nine in Mbombela and one in Thaba Chweu.
If we are to prevent the spread of deadly diseases such as cholera, it is
critical that our water purification infrastructure is effective to enhance
water quality. It is also essential that sewerage plants and related
infrastructure are upgraded to prevent possible contamination of water
sources.
Programme Director, in our interaction with beneficiaries of some of the
water projects we visited this morning, we were encouraged that the province is
making satisfactory progress towards ensuring that we address water service
backlogs to improve the quality of life of citizens. For many citizens, life
has changed for the better. Many of those who used to walk long distances to
fetch water from natural sources now have access to clean tap water. In all our
municipalities, we conducted assessments of water service backlogs and
identified specific interventions to address problems related to lack of access
to adequate and clean water.
Throughout the province, we have made significant strides in addressing
water services backlogs. The emerging picture is positive. As highlighted in
the State of the Province Address this year, of 945 394 households, 72,7
percent have access to water at Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP)
level and above. The backlog of the number of households with inadequate access
to water has been reduced to 257 912, constituting 27,3 percent of the
households in the province. Of this amount, 3,5 percent households have no
access to infrastructure at all. Our immediate priority is assisting these
households who have no access to infrastructure at all.
Many of the households with no infrastructure at all reside in Nkomazi. It
is critical that in Nkomazi we work hard to eradicate water service backlogs in
37 553 households. Our assessment of the operational status of water supply
schemes in Nkomazi pointed to infrastructure operation and maintenance
challenges as well as the dire need to extend water reticulation to areas with
no access to safe and clean water.
As part of the implementation of the Water for All flagship, the Executive
Council approved an initial allocation of R87 million towards the Nkomazi Water
Intervention Plan aimed at addressing clean water supply challenges to
impoverished and deprived areas of Nkomazi. Through the Water for All
programme, we want to ensure that we provide bulk water supply and reticulation
infrastructure to enable households who have no infrastructure at all to access
clean water.
We will also focus on the refurbishment and upgrading of dilapidated
reticulation and water treatment infrastructure to ensure that we improve
access to clean water. It is a cause for optimism that as we officially launch
the Water for All flagship today, water projects are under way in many areas of
Nkomazi.
Programme Director, one of the critical success factors in ensuring
sustainable water service delivery to communities is the existence of requisite
institutional capacity to effectively manage, operate and maintain bulk water
supply and reticulation infrastructure. Part of the Nkomazi Water Intervention
Plan aims to strengthen the capacity of the Nkomazi Local Municipality with the
intention to address issues such as staff capacity, financial management, and
customer care and water quality monitoring. In the meantime, a technical
steering committee comprising Nkomazi Local Municipality, Ehlanzeni District
Council, the Department of Water and Forestry (DWAF) and the Water for All
Programme Management Unit has been established to monitor and address
challenges in the implementation of water projects.
As communities, we have a responsibility to save water and jealously guard,
as our own, the infrastructure that government has provided to improve our
quality of life. Illegal connections and destruction of infrastructure will
take us backwards and contribute to poor access to clean and safe water. As
owners of the infrastructure, we must cherish and protect our community assets
from vandalism and abuse. If there are issues to be resolved, we must
communicate with councillors to ensure that challenges communities experience
is resolved as speedily as possible.
In this regard, I am tempted to believe that for this infrastructure to
serve us optimally in a sustainable manner, we need our own community-based
supervisory and control structures to look after these services. This
possibility, our municipality and councillors may want to explore, and by so
doing, advance the maxim that community organisation is a requisite for
community development.
Programme Director, I want to conclude by saying that as government we are
committed to improving access to sufficient and clean water so that we avoid
the negative impact engendered by lack of access to clean water on the health
of communities. In addition to this, we must mobilise partnerships to raise
awareness about the importance of keeping our environment clean to avoid
contamination of our water sources. The battle to realise a better life for all
citizens and communities in our province must be won.
In this work, nothing is as vital as collective concentration and
single-mindedness on our duties, both as a province and all our
municipalities.
I thank you.
Issued by: Office of the Premier, Mpumalanga Provincial Government
12 March 2009
