Letters | National water crisis

President Cyril Ramaphosa, when addressing premiers, mayors and officials at the President’s Co-ordinating Council meeting in Ekurhuleni recently, once again urged local government to address the increasing loss of bulk water. This, he stressed, was due to municipalities failing to fix or replace broken pipes and water mains. It is as if the record is stuck in a groove.

South Africans have had to listen to this plea for decades. The president failed to emphasise, however, that it is his ANC controlled councils that are most responsible for the failure to repair water systems. It seems that broken water systems and the non-delivery of water, particularly to under-privileged communities, are only front-page news at around election time.

What the president should be discussing is why his party’s council representatives and officials appear to be unmoved by this national crisis. It seems that the government’s solution to the problem is to award more water tanker contracts and not replace the broken pipes. Waste-water treatment plants are collapsing in many areas, resulting in the contamination of our fragile river systems, which puts future water supply at risk.

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Nobody in government appears to be worried about the contamination of our rivers by untreated human waste. The reality is that most municipalities are bankrupt and will never be in a financial position to address the backlog of broken infrastructure generally. Unless water supply is identified as the major crisis facing the future of SA, and a new funding model is developed to finance water infrastructure, it won’t be long before water becomes a luxury only affordable to those people with lots of loot. Central government needs to finance water infrastructure; it cannot be left to ratepayers and those consumers who pay, to foot the cost of this daily necessity.

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