Water and Sanitation Minister Senzo Mchunu says a steering committee he put together has come up with concrete plans for providing water and sanitation to residents of the North West.
Mchunu who assembled the team earlier in the year was speaking in Klerksdorp on the sidelines of the ANC National Working Committee visit.
“What we found is that there are many issues that need to be attended to by water services management. We decided to coordinate at the provincial level instead of municipalities as we do elsewhere,” he said.
Large parts of the North West are without water and Mchunu said his team has made progress in finding solutions. He said the work will take the form of each municipality, identifying its priority on water and sticking with that priority.
Mchunu said the government will then source funding for those priorities and decide on the model of delivery.
“There are instances where we are going to use the board, there are instances where we are going to use municipalities because we have to implement, we have to be in a hurry implementing all this.
“There is a three-kilometer pipe that the premier is complaining about, so we are going to have projects all over North West, priorities by each municipality at the technical committee that we have agreed and we are sourcing funding because there is no budget that was ready for North West in our department ordinarily in terms of interventions,” he said.
Mchunu said the government looked deeper at the grievances of those who, most of the time, go to the streets in protest against the lack of water within their communities.
“We are getting closer now to these things so that we are able to deliver water, people are not lying when they complain about water all over and they go to the streets. Remember, these are family men and women, they can’t just want to go and play in the street, it means there is a problem and we are taking that very seriously.
“That is why I became the co-chair of this steering committee instead of sending someone else, so that we do things on our own and with your hands at a close range.
“Water is a right. We are in a hurry to catch up because we have been denying people their constitutional rights. Water is life and the person can die if they do not have access to water, that is why we are in a hurry, if elections come we are in a hurry, if elections pass we are in a hurry until we cover everybody,” he said.
Mchunu said other water pipes were older than 100 years, others’ lifespan is double that and some were asbestos pipes which he said were not healthy for residents.
