The portfolio committee on water and sanitation has called on municipalities to invest in the maintenance of sewerage infrastructure and thus save money to use for service delivery.
Chairperson Mlungisi Johnson said the committee was convinced that “the lack of investment in the Sedibeng District and Emfuleni Local municipalities is at the centre of crumbling current infrastructure leading to contamination of the Vaal River System”.
Raw sewage has been spilling into the Vaal River for weeks now, leading to fish dying and contamination of the water.
“The committee visited the municipality and the Sebokeng Wastewater Treatment Plant, and found that some of the units were not functional, leading to the overloading of the remaining units,” Johnson said.
“The committee has always emphasised the need for proper investment and maintenance of infrastructure to ensure longevity of the system, and to avoid unintended consequences like spillage into a river system.
“It is also a requirement of the Department of Co-operative Governance’s Back to Basics programme that municipalities must spend 10% of their budgets on maintenance,” the committee said.
It added that while it supported the building of new units, the old units must be maintained to ensure optimal utilisation of the entire plant.
“Furthermore, the government must find ways to develop infrastructure with less cost by utilising technological advances in the market.
“A matter of concern for the committee was the delays in implementing the Sebokeng Regional Sewer Scheme, which ultimately has negative social and economic consequences attached.
“Besides the obvious cost overruns associated with the increasing cost of building materials, the other negative consequence is to small and medium enterprises that would have benefited from the contract and created much-needed job opportunities in the area.”
The Freedom Front Plus’s national spokesperson on local government, Wouter Wessels, said the death of fish in the Vaal River “serves as proof of the severe pollution that is jeopardising this water system’s entire ecosystem, while a seemingly indifferent government keeps denying that there is a real problem.
“The truth, however, is that the pollution of the Vaal River and other sources of water in the country is simply a consequence of the incompetence, mismanagement and corruption that is causing municipalities across the country to collapse,” Wessels said.
Johnson said that due to the spillage, “the amount of money the municipality spends on purifying the water increases astronomically, which affects municipal finances negatively”.
The committee said it was concerning that municipalities were still using old infrastructure despite increasing populations and development, which intensified demand on the system.
In a joint statement, the Department of Water and Sanitation, Rand Water, the Gauteng government, and the Sedibeng and Emfuleni municipalities said they were working hard towards ending the contamination of the Vaal River.