The DA has accused the Department of Water and Sanitation of deliberately “misleading” the political party by providing it with outdated information on the worsening state of South Africa’s sewage treatment plants.
Leon Basson, the DA’s deputy shadow minister of water and sanitation, is now considering legal action against Nomvula Mokonyane, the Minister of Water and Sanitation, for her failure to provide him with the 2014 Blue and Green Drop reports, but instead sending him 2013 data.
“We now know the main reason for this is that the 2014 reports are even worse than (what) we received,” he told the Saturday Star.
Basson has long accused Mokonyane of withholding these crucial reports, which Mokonyane pledged to release publicly in September last year, to “hide poor ANC performance” and the mismanagement of the national water infrastructure. Mokonyane has sent the individual reports to the municipalities
In November, Basson submitted a Promotion of Access to Information Application (PAIA), requesting the Blue and Green drop reports for 2013/2014, and the management reports for the same period.
When the December deadline lapsed, he threatened the department’s director-general, Margaret-Ann Diedericks, with legal action. A few days later, he received the documents on a CD.
But after comparing the Overstrand Green Drop report for 2013 he received from the department with the report sent by the municipality, he realised the information differed substantially. The same was true for the DA-run municipality of Midvaal.
“We asked these DA municipalities to supply us with their reports. We compared our supplied reports and theirs and confirmed there are new reports, which we hadn’t received. The information is totally different and they are misleading us.”
The department initiated the Blue and Green Drop reports to encourage municipalities and water service authorities to “raise the bar” for water purification and sewage effluent treatment.
In a letter Basson sent to Diedericks on Thursday, he told her it was unacceptable.
“I would like to thank you for the Blue and Green drop reports I received from your department. However, I’m disappointed that the report given to me differs from the report sent to municipalities.
“I received 2013 reports and your department sent out different reports to municipalities.”
The department has not released Green Drop reports for nearly three years. Instead, last year it released an executive summary for 2013, which Basson received in his batch of documents. It showed 60 of the 278 municipal wastewater treatment works qualified for Green Drop status.
The DA will now bring a new PAIA application if the department doesn’t correct this by Monday, and send it the same reports sent to municipalities, he says.
“I’ve been on oversight visits across the country last year and the situation is shocking.
“If you look at the 2013 Green Drop report and see what is on the ground now, it’s in an even worse condition, whether it’s in Cradock, Humansdorp, Bela Bela or Lichtenburg, Koppies or Parys.
“At the moment 80 percent of the problems with our water shortages have nothing to do with the drought,” he believes. “It’s maintenance of our water infrastructure. That’s our critical problem at the moment.
“They (municipalities) are putting in raw sewage into our river systems that pollutes our river downstream. Another municipality has to use that water to drink, and now has to use more chemicals to make it cleaner. Often that doesn’t happen. And so on it goes. People are fighting for water.”
The department did not respond to the Saturday’s Star request for comment.
Saturday Star