Pretoria - The government must get its house in order in providing water and sanitation, the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) says, and immediately eradicate the bucket toilet system.
The commission has given the government 30 days to come up with concrete solutions to a growing crisis surrounding sanitation and has recommended a cabinet-level task team be set up to ensure government departments co-operate.
The commission chose Water Week to release findings and recommendations based on five months of public hearings in which many South Africans complained bitterly about the quality and regularity of water supply.
The commission spokesman Isaac Mangena said water and sanitation were major human rights concerns.
“Water should be a priority above everything else. Water should not be made a commodity, it is a right,” he said. Mangena said the commission was unsure whether the government was aware of the true scale of the problem, because “it somehow doesn’t reach the upper echelons,” said Mangena
Since 2011, the commission had been asked to investigate 144 complaints on the quality and regularity of water supply.
“We are two decades into democracy and some people have not tasted clean water. When people talk (to the commission) you can see they are yearning for that drop of water,” Mangena said.
The Sunday Independent has seen a copy of the draft report, which could be amended once the commission receives comments from various government departments.
The report paints a dire picture of water supply, where R670 billion is needed over the next 10 years to upgrade dams, bulk water pipelines, purification plants and other water infrastructure.
The commission says the state of bulk water and waste water infrastructure is “of serious concern”.
The draft report quotes a report by the SA Institute of Civil Engineers and the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research, which says that “much of South Africa’s bulk water infrastructure is reaching the end of its life” and that “a serious problem regarding bulk infrastructure is uncontrolled, high levels of pollution, especially in dams”.
But the Department of Water Affairs says the Treasury is only able to supply R332bn – leaving the government with a R338bn shortfall.
According to the draft report “complaints were received in all provinces of a complete lack of access to water and sanitation”.
“Almost two-thirds of the Limpopo population does not have access to sufficient sanitation, while just under half the Mpumalanga and North West provinces do not have sufficient access. KwaZulu-Natal also has a below-average level of access to sanitation. Of particular concern is the Eastern Cape, where 12.7 percent of households do not have access to any form of sanitation, and the Free State, Northern Cape and Western Cape provinces, which have a large number of households still using a bucket for sanitation,” the draft report says.
The commission also points to breakdowns in communication between government departments.
“There is some confusion on sanitation provision since the function was moved over to the Department of Human Settlements (from Water Affairs). Since the function has been moved over, monitoring has fallen by the wayside. It is clear that a regulatory function over this basic service is required from Human Settlements,” the draft report reads.
The Department of Water Affairs says it is well aware of the problems of ageing infrastructure.
“In fact, the department did a diagnosis which informed the Water Infrastructure Invest plan,” said Water Affairs spokesman Mava Scott.
The Department of Human Settlements says that while 180 000 bucket toilets predating 1994 had already been done away with, people in the country’s 2 700 informal settlements mostly still used the bucket system.
Spokesman Xolani Xundu said the department was still working on “a sanitation master plan” while preparing to take over statutory functions.
Sunday Independent