South Africans living in urban areas believe their tap water is now safer to drink than it was four years ago, but residents of Mpumalanga and North West have the lowest confidence in their drinking water quality.
This is according to a new Water Research Commission Study, Perceptions of Municipal Waters and Sanitation Services, which found that 88 percent of urban South Africans have the perception that their tap water is safe to drink.
“This concurs with international studies, which found that most people in countries with a reliable water supply perceive tap water as having a low safety risk to drink,” said the study, which was released in Boksburg at a SA Local Government Association water meeting yesterday.
In 2011, the commission’s perception survey found that 81 percent of urban South Africans believed their tap water was safe to drink. This latest study was broader. “Instead of focusing on drinking water quality only, it investigated the general public’s perspective on aspects of water services that SA Local Government Association has identified as relevant to investigate.”
The research found that consumers in the metro municipalities perceived their tap water to be significantly safer to drink than consumers in the other urban municipalities. For metro municipalities, the study found a 15 percent gap between metros with the highest consumer confidence in drinking water quality (the City of Cape Town at 98% and eThekwini at 97%), and metros with the lowest consumer confidence (Buffalo City at 83% and Nelson Mandela Bay at 82%). The report found that consumers in the North West and Mpumalanga had the lowest confidence in their drinking water quality.
“These two provinces also have the least reliable water supply in terms of consumer experience and perception.”
About 60 percent of consumers in the North West suffered water interruptions once a month or more frequently.
The top six reasons why people thought their tap water was safe to drink include: “The water looks clean, nobody gets sick, the water tastes good, the water smells good, people say the water is safe to drink, and the municipality cleans the water.” The top six reasons that people gave for reasoning that their tap water was unsafe, included that it “looked dirty, tasted bad, smelt of chlorine, smelt bad, some people got sick from the water, and that others had said the water was unsafe to drink”.
“The less confident people are about how safe it is to drink tap water, the more likely they are to boil or filter tap water, or use bottled water if they can afford it. In North West, where 56 percent of consumers are confident that tap water is safe to drink, only 54 percent of consumers drank water straight from the tap,” said the study.
The report found that consumers with high incomes seemed to be buying bottled water, irrespective of their perception of the quality of tap water, as in the City of Cape Town where 98 percent of consumers were confident tap water was safe, but only 67 percent drank water straight from the tap.
The survey found that even though 72 percent of urban consumers believed their municipality was competent to deliver a good water and sanitation service, only 57 percent believed their municipality was competent to deal with water scarcity in the event of a drought. A similar study would be conducted to gauge rural perceptions soon.
Sensory aspects such as appearance, taste and odour had the strongest influence on the perceptions of the safety of tap water and that consumers “seem confused about whether the addition of chlorine makes water safe or unsafe to drink”.
Clean and safe drinking water was an important driver of positive perceptions of municipal services and municipalities could use this to improve their images.
“Few South African consumers know how much water they use or what the cost of water is. It’s therefore likely that consumers waste large quantities of water.
Saturday Star