I agree, but my point is that it is often caused by mismanagement and various other factors that are within our control, not a restriction on the actual resource. The water purification process should ideally cater for all common types of pollution, but more often than not, pollution is used as a scapegoat to cover up mismanagement.
Yeah...I agree with your point. There have been a couple of issues facing our water supply going back more than 10 years now.
- The main cause for this disaster is the decision by government to transfer water utilities from Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) to municipalities without capacitating the municipalities with the skills to run these water utilities.
- The other problem is financial investment into water and wastewater treatment infrastructure has been lacking since late 80’s. Its long been said that if the tendency continued, major issues would arise as far as future capital requirements are concerned since the modelled demand escalates at a much higher rate while the investment backlog grows. Most of the investment seemed to have gone on 3Rs approach (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle).
- Back in 2006, CSIR estimated the cost of replacing the water services infrastructure of Water Boards at R60 billion. I can imagine this figure would have grown considerably now since not much has been done as far as upgrading of infrastructure.
- Another problem is the leniency by DWAF to deal with the escalation of outstanding debts by municipalities who are continuously failing to pay their debts to Water Boards. These debts incapacitate the Water Boards and prevent them from making infrastructural investments.
- There is a lack of skilled personnel such as engineers and technicians mainly resulting from government uncompetitive remuneration packages, working bureaucratic conditions and cadre-deployment which leaves Water Boards unable to perform proper maintenance of infrastructure and other key functions.
My proposal is that every municapility should be run by a resident Town Engineer, Qualified Technicians who are legal appointees, have the powers to make decisions on delivery of infrastructural services without being affected by corrupt mayors and tender awarding processes.
At the moment, we have incompetent, unskilled political appointees who have no clue about infrastructural planning and management.
