Praying for rain? You might have to if your local water board goes under!
What is the punishment for repeatedly failing to pay a water account? The practice usually ends with a visit from the local municipality to ‘cut’ the water supply, or at least severely limit the defaulter’s access to it. The censure is less immediate when
It seems as if South Africa’s culture of non-payment has spread from the townships to local municipalities countrywide. In an answer to a recent parliamentary question, Gareth Morgan, Democratic Alliance shadow minister for water and environmental affairs, learned that municipalities owed more than R1bn to the country’s 14 water boards! Of this total approximately R525m is considered ‘old’ arrears and R630m ‘current’.
Where are the municipal managers?
Why aren’t local municipalities paying for their water? Two factors spring immediately to mind. The first is the apparent lack of appropriate financial management skills at the municipalities. And the second is that local municipalities are unable to collect water accounts from corporate and individual ratepayers in their districts. Money collected for water consumption is being diverted from its intended purpose, or not being collected at all.
Water boards aren’t run like private corporations. They receive regulated prices for their product and have to supply water to municipalities to comply with the country’s Constitution. In the event municipalities fail to pay their arrears their only recourse is to National Treasury, which has already taken steps to compensate certain water boards for non-payment. Umgeni Water reportedly received Treasury assistance after certain municipalities on its books failed to pay their water accounts for more than five years!
Vital infrastructure funding diverted
South Africa is committed to providing potable water and basic sanitation to all its citizens.
At a recent address to a German-South African Business Forum in Munich, Germany, Ms RT Mabudafhasi, deputy minister of water and environmental affairs said: “In terms of our legislation water is not only a social good and therefore established in our Constitution as a basic human right, but also an economic good and an essential component of growth and development.”
Although government inherited an efficient water and sanitation system, this system was reserved for certain sectors of the community. Since 1994 government has tried to address system inadequacies. The primary focus was on transformation to eliminate historic inequities in the provision of water, with a secondary focus on the decentralisation of function and finance to local government. “The department of water affairs … is the overall sector leader and custodian of the country’s water resources,” said Mabudafhasi, “but, since 2003, local government has taken full responsibility for ensuring access to water services in all areas!” This decentralisation focus could be at the heart of today’s payment crisis.
While large water boards like Rand Water can carry small defaulting municipalities, smaller water boards run into trouble very quickly. The viability of some of the country’s smaller boards is clearly an issue. Morgan told Sake24 last Wednesday (6 January 2010) that Namaqua (in the Northern Cape) has no funds to replace ageing infrastructure. This water board reported a net loss of R17m in its 2007/8 financial year. Other small water boards such as Botshelo (North-West) and Bushbuckridge (Mpumalanga) were also without the financial clout to carry non-paying municipalities.
What looming water crisis?
The ongoing struggle to meet Millennium Development Goal’s is placing tremendous strain on South Africa’s ageing water infrastructure. While the deputy minister is justified in trumpeting the extension of basic water supply and sanitation services to 91% and 76% of the country’s households respectively (by 2009), she still needs to acknowledge the possibility of a massive water supply disruption, or declines in quality as a result. Instead government dismisses warnings of an Eskom-scale collapse at one or more of the country’s water boards with denial and reassurance…
The deputy minister mentioned various newspaper and media reports of a looming water crisis in her November 2009 keynote address. “We are actually welcoming the emphasis on water matters as we believe water must be put central to all development,” she said. But this was not an acknowledgment of a crisis: “We are constantly engaging with our sector partners and are of the opinion that there is not a crisis, but [rather] a number of serious issues to be addressed.” Mabudafhasi then mentioned a dozen serious issues, including urbanisation and migration trends, the alignment of planning across the spheres of government, capacity in parts of local government, funding, viability of water institutions, sustainability of infrastructure, climate change and its effects of water security, quality of the water in our rivers, drinking water quality, increase use of treated effluent, water use efficiency (including water conservation and demand management), and stronger regulation and appropriate form of regulator.
Editor’s thoughts: South Africa faces many challenges in supplying potable water to all of its citizens. The recent water crisis at municipalities along the Garden Route is a case in point. As part of the solution to this crisis, minister of finance, Pravin Gordhan issued a government notice (14 December 2009) exempting certain municipalities from some provisions of the Municipal Finance Management Act, 2003. Is government doing enough to allay fears of a looming water crisis? Add your comments below, or send them to [email protected]
