Cape Town - The water affairs and sanitation department is undermining Parliament's water and sanitation portfolio committee on the water crisis in the Kgetlengrivier local municipality in the North West.Minister Nomvula Mokonyane will be summoned to appear before the committee next week, committee chairman Mlungisi Johnson said on Saturday.
"The portfolio committee on water and sanitation finds the lack of progress in resolving challenges of availability of water to the Kgetleng River municipality unacceptable. Various efforts by the committee to get answers from the department have so far proved unsuccessful," he said in a statement.
“It is evident that there is no willingness by the department to set in motion processes that will solve the debilitating challenge faced by 40 000 odd community members within the municipality.
The behaviour by the department points to a clear lack of accountability and respect which undermines the work of the committee and Parliament,” Johnson said.
The committee undertook an oversight visit to the North West in September 2016 and made recommendations to the department to intervene in the Kgetleng water crisis.
The department was to instruct the Magalies Water Board, an implementing agent in the North West, to finish infrastructure work still needed in the municipality for provision of water.
Proof of the intervention was to be forwarded to the committee by November 31, 2016. The deadline was then extended to January 23, 2017 but to date there had been no response.
“It is disappointing that to this day a letter of instruction was not sent to Magalies to implement infrastructure work needed to ensure access to
water for the people of Kgetleng,” Johnson said.
The committee was concerned about the impact on the lives of communities on the ground, especially the poor. It was even more concerned that the deputy director general responsible for national water resource infrastructure did not attend the meeting with the committee, despite a commitment to attend.
"As a result, the committee has resolved to summon the minister of water and sanitation to its next meeting on 22 February 2017 in an effort to get answers and political buy-in from the minister to implement the committee’s recommendations," Johnson said.
According to media reports on Friday, MPs were unhappy after the department could still not guarantee it would deliver the necessary pipeline to the parched municipality of Kgetlengrivier.
The municipality had been suffering from a two-and-a-half year drought due to poor infrastructure. The region's Swartruggens dam was expected to run out of water again in 100 days, News24 reported.