This follows after an announcement made by the minister on the last day of the Northern Cape leg of the Provincial Working Sessions on 26 January 2022. 

Mchunu and Deputy Ministers David Mahlobo and Dikeledi Magadzi met with the DWS Provincial officials and provincial government, Water Services Authority, and Water Users Associations during the three-day Ministerial working session which commenced on 24 January. Mchunu says the decision to look at the functionality of the water boards is also to ensure a continued and close partnership with municipalities as Water Service Authorities. The first to be reviewed will be Sedibeng Water Board, which the department has bailed out on two occasions in the recent past.

According to the statement, Mchunu says the idea is also to have water boards playing a central role with regard to municipalities delivering services. Mchunu emphasised that although South Africa is a water-scarce country, the biggest challenge facing the sector is to deliver water to households. Mchunu also noted that the balance of equity between water and sanitation was not reached. He says the ministry is currently working on a sanitation framework for the country.

“We want to first see how deep our leg is and make decisions that will ensure that the leg does not get any deeper. We have to try and dig the leg out. To this effect and to heed the call, we will urgently review the boards. It is all about our calculations and looking for an effective turnaround with regards to our main challenge, that of delivering water to households. Municipalities complained that they do not have the capacity to deliver water and sanitation services, but they want to. If there is a time to deliver water to households it is 2022, and we are taking steps towards that. We are also reviewing our own legislation in terms of empowering us and making intervention down to the ground to make sure the water gets delivered,” Mchunu expands.

“All along we have not been focusing equally on sanitation as we have been doing on water and now sanitation needs to be upgraded in terms of our attention. The main thing is to bring water to households and then in the process, you are able to deal with matters of sanitation,” Mchunu says. "At the moment anything in the form of sanitation is apparently doable. We don’t commonly have adopted norms and standards that everybody must adhere to and that will be the content of the sanitation framework. We can’t go on taking sewer in residential areas for granted,” he adds.

Statement